BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN 

SELF-REVEALED 

A  BIOGRAPHICAL  AND    CRITICAL   STUDY 
BASED    MAINLY  ON    HIS   OWN  WRITINGS 


BY 

WILLIAM  CABELL  BRUCE 


IN  TWO  VOLUMES 
VOLUME  I 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 

TObe  fmfcfterbocfcer  press 

1917 


COPYRIGHT,    19 1 7 
BY 

W.  CABELL  BRUCB 


Ubc  "fcnfcftetbocfter  Qvees,  flew  J^orh 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction i 

CHAPTER 

I. — Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System  .      12 

II. — Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs          .        .  .51 

III. — Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen  .    102 

IV. — Franklin's  Family  Relations  .        .        .  .    198 

V. — Franklin's  American  Friends  .        .        .  ,310 

VI. — Franklin's  British  Friends      .        .        .  .372 

VII. — Franklin's  French  Friends      ....    473 


as75<ifc 


Benjamin  FranKlin 
Self- Revealed 


Introduction 

IN  reading  the  life  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  the  most 
lasting  impressions  left  upon  the  mind  are  those  of 
versatility  and  abundance.  His  varied  genius  lent 
itself  withoulTerT ort  to  the  minutest  details  of  such  com- 
monplace things  as  the  heating  and  ventilation  of  rooms, 
the  correction  of  smoky  chimneys  and  naval  architecture 
and  economy.  His  severely  practical  turn  of  mind  was 
disclosed  even  in  the  devices  with  which  he  is  pictured 
in  his  old  age  as  relieving  the  irksomeness  of  physical 
effort — the  rolling  press  with  which  he  copied  his  letters, 
the  fan  which  he  worked  with  his  foot  in  warm  weather 
as  he  sat  reading,  the  artificial  hand  with  which  he  reached 
the  books  on  the  upper  shelves  of  his  library.  But, 
sober  as  Franklin's  genius  on  this  side  was,  it  proved 
itself  equal  to  some  of  the  most  exacting  demands  of 
physical  science;  and  above  all  to  the  sublime  task,  which 
created  such  a  world-wide  stir,  of  reducing  the  wild  and 
mysterious  lightning  of  the  heavens  to  captivity,  and 
bringing  it  down  in  fluttering  helplessness  to  the  earth. 
It  was  a  rare  mind  indeed  which  could  give  happy  expres- 
sion to  homely  maxims  of  plodding  thrift,  and  yet  enter- 

VOL.    I — I  T 


»-•  ••  .     .    .  ,       t 

2  Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

tain  noble  visions  of  universal  philanthropy.  The  stretch 
between  Franklin's  weighty  observations  on  Population, 
for  instance,  and  the  bright,  graceful  bagatelles,  with 
which  his  pen  occasionally  trifled,  was  not  a  short  one; 
but  it  was  compassed  by  his  intellect  without  the  slight- 
est evidence  of  halting  facility.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to 
say  that  this  intellect  was  an  organ  lacking  in,  no  element 
of  power  except  that  whiph  can  be  supplied  by  a  profound 
spiritual  insight  and  a  kindling  imagination  alone.  The 
Many-Sided  Franklin,  the  "title  of  the  essay  by  Paul 
Leicester  Ford,  is  a  felicitous  touch  of  description.  The 
life,  the  mind,  the  character  of  the  man  were  all  mani- 
fold, composite,  marked  by  spacious  breadth  and  free- 
dom. It  is  astonishing  into  how  many  different  provinces 
his  career  can  be  divided.  Franklin,  the  Man  of  Business, 
Franklin,  the  Philosopher,  Franklin,  the  Writer,  Frank- 
lin, the  Statesman,  Franklin,  the  Diplomatist,  have  all 
been  the  subjects  of  separate  literary  treatment.  As  a 
man  of  business,  he  achieved  enough,  when  the  limita- 
tions of  his  time  and  environment  are  considered,  to  make 
him  a  notable  precursor  of  the  strong  race  of  self-created 
men,  bred  by  the  later  material  expansion  of  America. 
As  a  scientist,  his  brilliant  electrical  discoveries  gave 
him  for  a  while,  as  contemporary  literature  so  strikingly 
evinces,  a  position  of  extraordinary  pre-eminence.  As 
a  writer,  he  can  claim  the  distinction  of  having  composed 
two  productions,  The  Autobiography  and  The  Way  to 
Wealth,  which  are  read  the  world  over.  Of  his  reputa- 
tion as  a  statesman  it  is  enough  to  remark  that  his 
signature  is  attached  to  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
the  Treaty  of  Alliance  between  the  United  States  and 
France,  the  Treaty  of  Peace  between  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States,  and  the  Federal  Constitution.  Of 
his  labors  as  a  diplomatist  it  may  be  said  that,  if  it  is 
true  that,  without  the  continuous  assistance  of  France, 
our  independence  would  not  have  been  secured,  it  is 


Introduction  3 

perhaps  equally  true  that,  without  his  wisdom,  tact  and 
European  prestige,  we  should  never  have  retained  this 
assistance,  so  often  imperilled  by  the  jealousy  and  vanity 
of  his  colleagues  as  well  as  by  the  usual  accidents  of 
international  intercourse.  His  life  was  like  a  full  five- 
act  play — prophetic  prologue  and  stately  epilogue,  and 
swelling  scene  imposed  upon  swelling  scene,  until  the 
tallow  chandler's  son,  rising  from  the  humblest  levels 
of  human  fortune  to  the  highest  by  uninterrupted  grada- 
tions of  invincible  success,  finally  becomes  the  recipient 
of  such  a  degree  of  impressive  homage  as  has  rarely 
been  paid  to  anyone  by  the  admiration  and  curiosity  of 
mankind. 

To  such  a  diversified  career  as  this  the  element  of 
mere  longevity  was,  of  course,  indispensable.  Renown  so 
solid  and  enduring  as  that  of  Franklin  and  acquired  in 
so  many  different  fields  was  not  a  thing  to  be  achieved 
by  a  few  fortunate  strokes.  He  did  not  awake  one  morn- 
ing, <as  did  Byron,  to  find  himself  famous;  though  his 
fame  in  the  province  of  electrical  science  travelled  fast 
when  it  once  got  under  way.  Such  a  full-orbed  renown 
could  be  produced  only  by  the  long  gestation  of  many 
years  of  physical  vigor  and  untiring  activity.  With  the 
meagre  opportunities  afforded  by  colonial  conditions 
for  the  accumulation  of  wealth,  there  had  to  be  an  ex- 
tended period  of  unflagging  attention  to  Poor  Richard's 
saying:  "Many  a  little  makes  a  mickle."  To  this  period 
belong  some  things  that  the  self -revelation  of  the  Auto- 
biography, unselfish  as  it  is,  cannot  dignify,  or  even 
redeem  from  moral  squalor,  and  other  things  which  even 
the  frankness  itself  of  the  Autobiography  is  not  frank 
enough  to  disclose.  Then  there  is  the  unique  story, 
imprinted  upon  the  face  of  Philadelphia  to  this  day,  of 
his  fruitful  exertions  as  Town  Oracle  and  City  Builder. 
Then  there  is  the  episode  of  scientific  inquiry,  all  too  brief, 
when  the  prosperous  printer  and  tradesman,  appraising 


4  Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

wealth  at  its  true  value,  turns  away  from  his  printing 
press  and  stock  of  merchandise  to  give  himself  up  with 
enthusiastic  ardor  to  the  study  of  electrical  phenomena. 
Then  there  is  the  long  term  of  public  employment,  be- 
ginning with  the  Clerkship  of  the  Pennsylvania  Assembly 
and  not  ending  until,  after  many  years  of  illustrious 
public  service  as  legislator,  administrator,  diplomatic 
agent  and  foreign  minister,  Franklin  complains  in  a  letter 
to  Dr.  and  Mrs.  John  Bard  that  the  public,  not  content 
with  eating  his  flesh,  seems  resolved  to  pick  his  bones. 

The  amount  of  work  that  he  did,  the  mass  of  results 
that  he  accomplished,  during  the  long  tract  of  time 
covered  by  his  life,  is  simply  prodigious.  Primarily, 
Franklin  was  a  man  of  action.  The  reputation  that  he 
coveted  most  was,  as  he  declared,  in  a  letter  to  Samuel 
Mather,  that  of  a  doer  of  good.  Utility  was  the  standard 
set  by  him  for  all  his  activities,  and  even  his  system  of 
ethics  did  not  escape  the  hard,  griping  pressure  of  this 
standard.  What  he  aimed  at  from  first  to  last,  whether 
in  the  domain  of  science,  literature  or  government,  was 
practical  results,  and  men,  as  they  are  known  to  experi- 
enced and  shrewd,  though  kindly,  observers  of  men,  were 
the  agencies  with  which  he  sought  to  accomplish  such 
results.  He  never  lost  sight  of  the  sound  working  prin- 
ciple, which  the  mere  academician  or  closet  philosopher 
is  so  prone  to  forget,  that  the  game  cannot  be  played 
except  with  the  chess-men  upon  the  board.  But  happily 
for  the  world  few  men  of  action  have  ever  bequeathed 
to  posterity  such  abundant  written  records  of  their  lives. 
When  Franklin  desired  to  promote  any  project  or  to 
carry  any  point,  he  invariably,  or  all  but  invariably, 
invoked  the  aid  of  his  pen  to  attain  his  end.  To  write 
for  money,  or  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  writing,  or  even 
for  literary  fame  was  totally  alien  to  the  purposes  for 
which  he  wrote.  A  pen  was  to  him  merely  another  prac- 
tical instrument  for  forwarding  some  private  aim  of  his 


Introduction  5 

or  some  definite  public  or  political  object,  to  which  his 
sympathies  and  powers  were  committed,  or  else  but  an 
aid  to  social  amusement.  As  the  result  of  this  secondary- 
kind  of  literary  activity,  he  left  behind  him  a  body  of 
writings  of  one  kind  or  another  which  enables  us  to  meas- 
ure far  more  accurately  than  we  should  otherwise  have 
been  able  to  do  the  amount  of  thought  and  performance 
crowded  into  those  eventful  years  of  lusty  and  prolific 
existence.  In  the  Library  of  Congress,  in  the  Library 
of  the  American  Philosophical  Society,  in  the  Library  of 
the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  in  numerous  other  col- 
lections in  both  hemispheres  are  found  the  outflowings 
of  a  brain  to  which  exuberance  of  production  was  as 
natural  as  rank  vegetation  to  a  fat  soil.  Nor  should  it 
be  forgotten  that  many  of  his  papers  have  perished, 
which,  if  still  extant,  would  furnish  additional  proofs  of 
the  fertility  of  his  genius  and  swell  the  sum  of  pleasure 
and  instruction  which  we  derive  from  his  works.  With 
the  sigh  that  we  breathe  over  the  lost  productions  of  an- 
tiquity might  well  be  mingled  another  over  the  papers 
and  letters  which  were  confided  by  Franklin,  on  the  eve 
of  his  mission  to  France,  to  the  care  of  Joseph  Galloway, 
only  to  fall  a  prey  to  ruthless  spoliation  and  dispersion. 
To  look  forward  to  a  long  winter  evening  enlivened  by 
the  missing  letters  that  he  wrote  to  his  close  friends, 
Jonathan  Shipley,  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph's,  "the  good 
Bishop/'  as  he  called  him,  Sir  Edward  Newenham,  of 
the  Irish  Parliament,  and  Jan  Ingenhousz,  physician  to 
Maria  Theresa,  would  alone,  to  one  familiar  with  his 
correspondence,  be  as  inviting  a  prospect  as  could  be 
held  out  to  any  reader  with  a  relish  for  the  intimate 
letters  of  a  wise,  witty  and  humorous  letter-writer. 

The  length  of  time  during  which  the  subtle  and  power- 
ful mind  of  Franklin  was  at  work  is,  we  repeat,  a  fact 
that  must  be  duly  taken  into  account  in  exploring  the 
foundations  of  his  celebrity.     "By  living  twelve  years 


6  Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

beyond  David's  period/  f  he  said  in  one  of  his  letters  to 
George  Whatley,  "I  seem  to  have  intruded  myself  into 
the  company  of  posterity,  when  I  ought  to  have  been 
abed  and  asleep."  He  was  born  in  Boston,  Massachu- 
Ai  setts,  on  January  6  (old  style),  1706,  and  died  in  the 
Gity  of  Philadelphia  on  April  17,  1790.  At  the  time  of 
his  birth,  Anne  was  in  the  fourth  year  of  her  reign  as 
.  Queen  of  England,  and  Louis  XIV.  was  King  of  France. 
4jpnly  eighty-five  years  had  elapsed  since  the  landing  at 
^Plymouth.  More  than  three  years  were  to  elapse  be- 
fore  the  battle  of  Malplaquet,  more  than  five  years  before 
the  publication  of  the  first  Spectator,  twenty  years  before 
the  publication  of  Gulliver's  Travels.  Franklin's  name 
was  an  honored  one  not  only  in  his  native  land  but  be- 
yond seas  before  any  of  the  other  great  men  who  signed 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  had  emerged  from 
provincial  obscurity.  His  birth  preceded  that  of  Wash- 
ington by  twenty-six  years,  that  of  John  Adams  by 
thirty  years,  that  of  Jefferson  by  thirty-seven  years. 
Coming  into  the  world  only  fifteen  years  after  the  out- 
break of  the  witchcraft  delusion  at  Salem,  he  lived  to  be 
a  member  of  the  Federal  Convention  and  to  pass  down  to 
us  as  modern  in  spirit  and  purpose  as  the  American 
House  of  Representatives  or  the  American  Patent  Office. 
He,  at  least,  is  a  standing  refutation  of  the  claim  that  all 
the  energetic  tasks  of  human  life  are  performed  by  young 
men.  He  was  seventy  years  of  age  when  he  arrived  in 
France  to  enter  upon  the  laborious  diplomatic  career 
which  so  signally  increased  the  lustre  of  his  fame  and  so 
gloriously  prospered  our  national  fortunes;  and  he  was 
seventy-nine  years  of  age  when  his  mission  ended.  But 
even  then,  weighed  down  though  he  was  by  the  strong 
hand  of  time  and  vexed  by  diseases  which  left  him  little 
peace,  there  was  no  danger  that  he  would  be  classed  by 
anyone  with  the  old  townsmen  of  whom  Lord  Bacon 
speaks  "that  will  be  still  sitting  at  their  Street  doore 


Introduction  7 

though  thereby  they  offer  Age  to  Scorne."  After  his 
return  from  France,  he  lived  long  enough  to  be  thrice 
elected  President  of  the  State  of  Pennsylvania  and  to  be 
a  useful  member  of  the  Convention  that  framed  the 
Federal  Constitution;  and  only  twenty-four  days  before 
his  death  he  wrote  the  speech  of  Sidi  Mehemet  Ibrahim 
on  the  petition  of  the  Erika,  or  Purists  for  the  abolition 
of  piracy  and  slavery  which  is  one  of  the  happiest  effu- 
sions of  his  satirical  genius. 

Multos  da  annos  is  a  prayer,  we  may  readily  believe, 
that  is  often  granted  by  the  Gods  with  a  scornful  smile. 
In  the  case  of  Franklin,  even  without  such  a  protracted 
term  of  life  as  was  his  portion,  he  would  still  have  en- 
joyed a  distinguished  place  in  the  memory  of  men,  but 
not  that  broad,  branching,  full-crowned  fame  which  makes 
him  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  landmarks  of  the 
eighteenth  century. 

And  fully  in  keeping  with  the  extent  of  this  fame  was 
the  extent  of  his  relationship  to  the  social  and  intellec- 
tual world  of  his  time.  The  main  background  of  his  life, 
of  course,  was  American — Lake  Champlain,  the  St.  Law- 
rence, the  Charles,  the  Connecticut,  the  Hudson,  the 
Delaware  and  the  Ohio  rivers;  the  long  western  reaches 
of  the  Atlantic;  the  dark  curtain  of  firs  and  hemlocks 
and  primeval  masses  of  rock  which  separated  the  two 
powers  that  ceaselessly  struggled  for  the  mastery  of  the 
continent,  and  rarely  lifted  except  to  reveal  some  appal- 
ling tragedy,  chargeable  to  the  French  and  their  dread 
ally,  the  Red  Indian;  Boston,  New  York,  Philadelphia, 
Fort  Duquesne — all  the  internal  features  and  surround- 
ings in  a  word  of  the  long,  narrow  strip  of  English  terri- 
tory between  Boston  and  Philadelphia  with  which  he 
was  so  familiar,  and  over  which  his  influence  was  asserted 
in  so  many  ways.  With  the  exception  of  his  brief  so- 
journ in  London  in  his  youth,  his  whole  life  was  passed 
in  the  Colonies  until  he  was  fifty-one  years  of  age.     Before 


8  Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

he  sailed  for  England  in  1757,  upon  his  first  foreign  mis- 
sion, the  circumstances  of  his  career  had  been  such  as  to 
make  him  generally  known  to  the  people  of  the  Colonies. 
His  Almanac,  his  Gazette,  his  pithy  sayings,  his  humorous 
stories,  his  visits  to  Boston,  attended  by  the  formation 
of  so  many  wayside  friendships,  his  postal  expeditions, 
the  printing  presses  set  up  by  him  at  many  different 
points,  his  private  fortune,  his  public  services,  his  electri- 
cal experiments  were  all  breath  for  the  trump  of  his  fame. 
He  knew  Colonial  America  as  few  Colonial  Americans 
knew  it.  He  was  born  and  reared  in  Boston,  and,  after 
his  removal  to  Philadelphia,  he  revisited  his  native  city 
at  regular  intervals.  "The  Boston  manner,  turn  of 
phrase,  and  even  tone  of  voice,  and  accent  in  pronuncia- 
tion,^ all  please,  and  seem  to  refresh  and  revive  me,"  he 
said  in  his  old  age  in  a  letter  to  the  Rev.  John  Lathrop. 
Philadelphia,  the  most  populous  and  opulent  of  the  colo- 
nial towns,  was  his  lifelong  place  of  residence.  In  the 
Autobiography  he  refers  to  it  as  *'A  city  I  love,  having 
lived  many  years  in  it  very  happily."  He  appears  to 
have  been  quite  frequently  in  New  York.  His  postal 
duties  took  him  as  far  south  as  Williamsburg,  and  the 
Albany  Congress  drew  him  as  far  north  of  New  York  as 
Albany.  He  was  in  the  camp  of  Braddock  at  Frederick, 
Maryland,  just  before  that  rash  and  ill-starred  general 
set  out  upon  his  long,  dolorous  march  through  the  wilder- 
ness where  disaster  and  death  awaited  him.  Facts  like 
these  signify  but  little  now  when  transit  from  one  distant 
point  to  another  in  the  United  States  is  effected  with 
such  amazing  rapidity,  but  they  signified  much  under 
the  crude  conditions  of  colonial  life.  Once  at  least  did 
Franklin  have  his  shoulder  dislocated  by  an  accident  on 
the  atrocious  roads  of  Colonial  New  England.  Once  he 
was  thrown  into  the  water  from  an  upset  canoe  near 
Staten  Island.  His  masterly  answers,  when  examined 
before  the  House  of  Commons,  showed  how  searchingly 


Introduction  9 

conversant  he  was  with  everything  that  related  to  America. 
For  some  of  our  most  penetrating  glances  into  colonial 
life  we  are  indebted  to  his  writings;  particularly  instruc- 
tive being  his  observations  upon  population  in  the  Colonies, 
the  economic  condition  and  political  temper  of  their 
people  and  the  characteristics  and  habits  of  the  Indians. 
It  was  a  broad  experience  which  touched  at  one  extreme 
the  giddy  and  artificial  life  of  Paris,  on  the  eve  of  the 
French  Revolutionfand  at  the  other  the  drunken  Indian 
orgies  at  the  conclusion  of  the  treaty  at  Carlisle  which 
Franklin  has  depicted  in  the  Autobiography  with  a  brush 
worthy  of  Rembrandt  in  these  words:  "Their  dark- 
colour'd  bodies,  half  naked,  seen  only  by  the  gloomy 
light  of  the  bonfire,  running  after  and  beating  one  another 
with  firebrands,  accompanied  by  their  horrid  yellings, 
form'd  a  scene  the  most  resembling  our  ideas  of  hell  that 
could  well  be  imagin'd." 

But  the  peculiar  distinction  of  Franklin  is  that  his  life 
stands  out  vividly  upon  an  European  as  well  as  an  Ameri- 
can background.  It  is  interesting  to  contrast  the  scene 
at  Carlisle  with  tfye  opera  in  honor  of  the  Comte  du  Nord, 
at  which  he  was  present,  during  the  French  mission. 
"The  House,"  he  says  in  his  Journal  of  the  Negotiation 
for  Peace  with  Great  Britain,  "being  richly  finish'd  with 
abundance  of  Carving  and  Gilding,  well  Illuminated  with 
Wax  Tapers,  and  the  Company  all  superbly  drest,  many 
of  the  Men  in  Cloth  of  Tissue,  and  the  Ladies  sparkling 
with  Diamonds,  form'd  altogether  the  most  splendid 
Spectacle  my  Eyes  ever  beheld."  Until  the  august  figure 
of  Washington  filled  the  eye  of  mankind,  Franklin  was 
the  only  American  who  had  ever  won  a  solid  and  splendid 
European  reputation.  The  opportunity  had  not  yet 
arisen  for  the  lively  French  imagination  to  declare  that 
he  had  snatched  the  sceptre  from  tyrants,  but  the  first 
half  of  Turgot's  tremendous  epigram  had  been  realized; 
for  the  lightning  he  had  snatched,  or  rather  filched,  from 


io         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

the  sky.  It  may  well  be  doubted  whether  any  one 
private  individual  with  such  limited  pecuniary  resources 
ever  did  as  much  for  the  moral  and  intellectual  welfare 
of  any  one  community  as  Franklin  did  for  pre-revolu- 
tionary  Philadelphia;  but  it  was  impossible  that  such 
aspirations  and  powers  as  his  should  be  confined  within 
the  pale  of  colonial  provincialism.  His  widespread  fame, 
his  tolerant  disposition,  his  early  residence  in  England, 
his  later  residence  there  for  long  periods,  his  excursions 
into  Scotland  and  Ireland  and  Continental  countries, 
the  society  of  men  of  the  world  in  London  and  other  great 
cities  combined  to  endow  him  with  a  character  truly 
cosmopolitan  which  was  to  be  still  further  liberalized  by 
French  influence.  During  his  life,  he  crossed  the  Atlantic 
no  less  than  eight  times.  After  1757  the  greater  part  of 
his  life  was  spent  abroad.  Of  the  eighty-four  years,  of 
which  his  existence  was  made  up,  some  twenty-six  were 
passed  in  England  and  France.  He  was  as  much  at 
home  on  The  Strand  as  on  Market  Street  in  Philadelphia. 
The  friendships  that  he  formed  in  England  and  France 
were  almost  as  close  as  those  that  he  had  formed  in  Penn- 
sylvania with  his  cronies,  Hugh  Roberts  and  John  Bar- 
tram.  He  became  so  thoroughly  domesticated  in  England 
during  his  periods  of  sojourn  in  that  country  that  he 
thought  of  remaining  there  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  and  yet, 
if  the  Brillons  had  only  been  willing  to  confer  the-  hand 
of  their  daughter  upon  his  grandson,  William  Temple 
Franklin,  he  would  contentedly  have  died  in  France. 
If  there  ever  was  an  American,  if  there  ever  was  a  citizen 
of  the  world,  if  there  ever  was  a  true  child  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  it  was  he.  His  humanitarian  sympathies,  his 
catholic  temper,  his  generous,  unobstructed  outlook  en- 
abled him  without  difficulty  to  adjust  himself  with  ease 
to  the  genius  of  every  people  with  whom  he  was  brought 
into  familiar  contact.  In  America  he  was  such  a  thorough 
American  in  every  respect  that  Carlyle  is  said  to  have 


Introduction  n 

termed  him  on  one  occasion,  "The  Father  of  all  the 
Yankees."  In  England  he  was  English  enough  to  feel 
the  full  glow  of  her  greatness  and  to  see  her  true  interests 
far  more  clearly  than  she  saw  them  herself.  He  had  too 
many  Anglo-Saxon  traits  to  become  wholly  a  Frenchman 
when  he  lived  in  France,  but  he  became  French  enough 
to  truly  love  France  and  her  people  and  to  be  truly  be- 
loved by  them.  In  the  opinion  of  Sainte-Beuve  he  is 
the  most  French  of  all  Americans. 


CHAPTER  I 
FranKlin's  Moral  Standing  and  System 

UNTIL  a  comparatively  recent  period  totally  false 
conceptions  in  some  respects  of  Franklin's  char- 
acter were  not  uncommon.  To  many  he  was 
merely  the  father  of  a  penurious,  cheese-paring  philos- 
ophy, and  to  no  little  extent  the  idea  prevailed  that  his 
own  nature  and  conduct  corresponded  with  its  precepts. 
There  could  be  no  greater  error.  Of  the  whole  science 
of  prudential  economy  a  master  indeed  he  was.  His 
observations  upon  human  life,  in  its  pecuniary  relations, 
and  upon  the  methods,  by  which  affluence  and  ease  are 
to  be  wrested  from  the  reluctant  grasp  of  poverty,  are 
always  sagacious  in  the  highest  degree.  Poor  Richard 
is  quite  as  consummate  a  master  of  the  science  of  rising 
in  the  world  as  Aristotle  is  of  the  Science  of  Politics  or 
Mill  of  the  Science  of  Political  Economy.  Given  health 
and  strength,  a  man,  who  faithfully  complied  with  his 
shrewd  injunctions  and  yet  did  not  prosper,  would  be  as 
much  a  freak  of  nature  as  a  man  who  thrust  his  hand  into 
the  fire  and  yet  received  no  physical  hurt.  The  ready 
and  universal  assent  given  to  their  full  truth  and  force 
by  human  experience  is  attested  by  the  fact  that  The 
Way  to  Wealth,  or  The  Speech  of  Father  Abraham,  "the 
plain,  clean  old  Man  with  white  Locks,"  in  which  Frank- 
lin, when  writing  one  of  the  prefaces  of  Poor  Richard's 
Almanac,  condensed  the  wit  and  wisdom,  original  and 

12 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    13 

second  hand,  of  that  incomparable  manual  of  The  Art  of 
Material  Success,  has,  through  innumerable  editions  and 
reprints,  and  translations  into  every  written  tongue  from 
the  French  to  the  Russian  and  Chinese,  become  almost 
as  well  known  to  the  entire  civilized  globe  as  the  unbroken 
strain  of  the  martial  airs  of  England.  So  well  calculated, 
it  was  thought,  was  it  to  promote  sound  principles  of 
diligence  and  frugality  that  it  was,  we  are  told  by  Frank- 
lin, reprinted  in  England,  to  be  set  up  in  the  form  of  a 
broadside  in  houses,  and,  when  translated  into  French, 
was  bought  by  the  clergy  and  gentry  of  France  for  distri- 
bution among  their  poor  parishioners  and  tenants.  But 
so  far  from  being  the  slave  of  a  parsimonious  spirit  was 
Franklin  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  single  out  any  self- 
made  man  who  ever  formed  a  saner  estimate  of  the  value 
of  money  than  he  did  or  lived  up  to  it  more  fearlessly. 
In  seeking  money,  he  was  actuated,  as  his  early  retire- 
ment from  business  proved,  only  by  the  high-minded 
motive  to  self -enrichment  which  is  so  pointedly  expressed 
in  the  lines  of  Burns: 

"Not  for  to  hide  it  in  a  hedge, 
Nor  for  a  train  attendant, 
But  for  the  glorious  privilege 
Of  being  independent." 

No  sooner  did  he  accumulate  a  sufficient  fortune  to  pro- 
vide for  the  reasonable  wants  of  his  family  and  himself 
than  he  proceeded  to  make  this  fortune  the  handmaid  of 
some  of  the  higher  things  of  life — wholesome  reading, 
scientific  research,  public  usefulness,  schemes  of  benefi- 
cence. In  1748,  when  he  was  in  the  full  flush  of  business 
success  and  but  forty-two  years  of  age,  he  deliberately, 
for  the  sake  of  such  things,  retired  from  all  active  con- 
nection with  business  pursuits.  In  a  letter  to  Abiah 
Franklin,  his  mother,  shortly  after  he  found  himself  free 


14         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

forever  from  the  cares  of  his  shop,  he  speaks  of  himself  in 
these  words:  "I  enjoy,  thro'  Mercy,  a  tolerable  Share  of 
Health.  I  read  a  great  deal,  ride  a  little,  do  a  little  Busi- 
ness for  myself,  more  for  others,  retire  when  I  can,  and 
go  into  Company  when  I  please;  so  the  Years  roll  round, 
and  the  last  will  come;  when  I  would  rather  have  it  said, 
He  lived  Usefully,  than  He  died  Rich."  About  the  same 
time,  he  wrote  to  William  Strahan,  a  business  correspon- 
dent, that  the  very  notion  of  dying  worth  a  great  sum  was 
to  him  absurd,  and  just  the  same  as  if  a  man  should  run 
in  debt  for  one  thousand  superfluities,  to  the  end  that, 
when  he  should  be  stripped  of  all,  and  imprisoned  by  his 
creditors,  it  might  be  said,  he  broke  worth  a  great  sum. 
On  more  than  one  occasion,  when  there  was  a  call  upon 
his  public  zeal,  his  response  was  generous  to  the  point  of 
imprudence.  The  bond  that  he  gave  to  indemnify  against 
loss  the  owners  of  the  wagons  and  horses  procured  by 
his  energy  and  address  for  Braddock's  expedition  led  to 
claims  against  him  to  the  amount  of  nearly  twenty  thou-, 
sand  pounds,  which  would  have  ruined  him,  if  the  British 
Government  had  not  rescued  him  after  long  delay  from 
his  dreadful  situation.  Without  hesitation  he  entered 
during  his  first  mission  to  England  into  a  personal  engage- 
ment that  an  act  taxing  the  estate  of  the  Proprietaries  of 
Pennsylvania  in  common  with  the  estates  of  the  People 
of  Pennsylvania  would  not  result  in  any  injustice  to  the 
Proprietaries.  On  a  later  occasion,  in  order  to  prevent 
war  between  Great  Britain  and  her  Colonies,  he  was 
willing  to  bind  himself,  to  the  whole  extent  of  his  private 
fortune,  to  make  pecuniary  reparation  for  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  tea  cast  into  Boston  harbor,  if  the  Province 
of  Massachusetts  did  not  do  so.  One  of  his  last  acts 
before  leaving  America  for  his  mission  to  France  was  to 
place  the  sum  of  three  or  four  thousand  pounds,  which 
was  a  large  part  of  this  fortune,  and  all  the  ready  money 
at  his  command,  at  the  disposal  of  Congress.     His  salary 


r 

Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    15 

as  President  of  Pennsylvania  was  all  given  or  bequeathed 
by  him  to  public  objects.  The  small  sums,  to  which  he 
became  entitled  as  one  of  the  next  of  kin  of  his  father  and 
his  cousin,  Mrs.  Fisher,  of  Wellingborough,  England,  he 
relinquished  to  members  of  the  family  connection  who 
needed  them  more  than  he  did.  Once,  though  a  com- 
mercial panic  was  prevailing,  he  pledged  his  credit  to  the 
extent  of  five  thousand  pounds  for  the  purpose  of  sup- 
porting ,  that  of  a  London  friend.  His  correspondence 
nowhere  indicates  any  degree  of  pecuniary  caution  in 
excess  of  the  proper  demands  of  good  sense.  On  the 
^contrary,  it  furnishes  repeated  testimony  to  his  prompti- 
tude in  honoring  the  solicitations  of  private  distress  or 
subscribing  to  public  purposes.  Conspicuously  unselfish 
was  he  when  the  appeal  was  to  his  public  spirit  or  to  his 
interest  in  the  general  welfare  of  mankind.  Among  his 
innumerable  benefactions  was  a  gift  of  one__.ihousand 
pounds  to  Franklin  College,  Pennsylvania.  When  he 
invented  his  open  stove  for  the  better  warming  of  rooms, 
he  gave  the  model  to  his  friend,  Robert  Grace,  who  found, 
Franklin  tells  us  in  the  Autobiography,  the  casting  of  the 
plates  for  the  stove  at  his  furnace  near  Philadelphia  a 
profitable  thing.  So  far  from  begrudging  this  profit  to 
his  friend,  he  wrote  his  interesting  Account  of  the  New- 
invented  Pennsylvanian  Fireplaces  to  promote  the  public 
demand  for  the  invention.  A  London  ironmonger  made 
some  small  changes  in  the  stove,  which  were  worse  than 
of  no  value  to  it,  and  reaped,  Franklin  was  told,  a  little 
fortune  by  it.  "  And  this,"  he  says  in  the  Autobiography, 
"is  not  the  only  instance  of  patents  taken  out  for  my 
inventions  by  others,  tho*  not  always  with  the  same  suc- 
cess, which  I  never  contested,  as  having  no  desire  of 
profiting  by  patents  myself,  and  hating  disputes."  When 
he  was  actually  engaged  in  the  business  of  printing,  a 
similar  motive,  so  far  as  public  spirit  went,  led  him  to 
offer  to  print  a  treatise  by  Cadwallader  Colden  on  the 


16         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Cause  of  Gravitation  at  his  own  expense  and  risk.  If  he 
could  be  the  means  of  communicating  anything  valuable 
to  the  world,  he  wrote  to  Colden,  he  did  not  always  think 
of  gaining  nor  even  of  saving  by  his  business. 

That  the  character  of  Franklin  should  ever  have  been 
deemed  so  meanly  covetous  is  due  to  Poor  Richard's 
Almanac  and  the  Autobiography.  The  former,  with  its 
hard,  bare  homilies  upon  the  Gospel  of  Getting  on  in  Life 
and  its  unceasing  accent  upon  the  duty  of  scrimping  and 
saving,  circulated  so  long  and  so  widely  throughout  the 
Colonies  that  the  real  Franklin  came  to  be  confused  in 
many  minds  with  the  fictitious  Poor  Richard.  Being  in- 
tended mainly  for  the  instruction  and  amusement  of  the 
common  people,  whose  chief  hope  of  bettering  their  condi- 
tion lay  in  rigid  self-denial,  it  is  naturally  keyed  to  unison 
with  the  ruder  and  austerer  principles  of  human  thrift.  As 
to  the  Autobiography,  with  its  host  of  readers,  the  only 
Franklin  known  to  the  great  majority  of  persons,  who  have 
any  familiarity  with  Franklin  at  all,  is  its  Franklin,  and  this 
Franklin  is  the  one  who  had  to  "make  the  night  joint- 
laborer  with  the  day,"  breakfast  on  bread  and  milk  eaten 
out  of  a  two-penny  earthen  porringer  with  a  pewter  spoon, 
and  closely  heed  all  the  sage  counsels  of  Poor  Richards  Al- 
manac before  he  could  even  become  the  possessor_Qla  china 
bowl  and  a  silver  spoon.  It  is  in  the  Autobiography  that 
the  story  of  Franklin's  struggle,  first  for  the  naked  means 
of  subsistence,  and  then  for  pecuniary  competency,  is 
told;  and  the  harsh  self-restraint,  the  keen  eye  to  every 
opportunity  for  self -promotion,  and  the  grossly  mechani- 
cal theory  of  morals  disclosed  by  it  readily  give  color  to 
the  notion  that  Franklin  was  nothing  more  than  a  sordid 
materialist.  It  should  be  remembered  that  it  is  from  the 
Autobiography  that  we  obtain  the  greatest  part  of  our 
knowledge  of  the  exertions  through  which  he  acquired 
his  fortune,  and  that  the  successive  ascending  stages,  by 
which  he  climbed  the  steep  slopes  that  lead  up  from  pov- 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    17 

erty  and  obscurity,  are  indelibly  set  forth  in  this  lifelike 
book  with  a  pen  as  coarse  but  at  the  same  time  as  vivid 
and  powerful  as  the  pencil  with- which  Hogarth  depicts 
the  descending  stages  of  the  Rake's  Progress.  And 
along  with  these  facts  it  should  also  be  remembered  that 
the  didactic  purpose  by  which  the  Autobiography  was 
largely  inspired  should  be  duly  allowed  for  before  we  draw 
too  disparaging  inferences  about  Franklin  from  anything 
that  he  says  in  that  book  with  respect  to  his  career. 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  almost  every  reproach  attach- 
ing to  the  reputation  of  Franklin  is  attributable  to  the 
candor  of  the  Autobiography,  It  is  true  that  in  the 
political  contests  between  the  Proprietary  and  Popular 
Parties  in  Colonial  Pennsylvania  he  was  often  visited 
with  virulent  abuse  by  the  retainers  of  the  Proprietaries. 
This  was  merely  the  dirty  froth  brought  to  the  surface 
by  every  boiling  pot.  It  is  also  true  that,  after  the  trans- 
mission of  the  Hutchinson  letters  to  New  England,  he 
was  the  object  of  much  savage  censure  at  the  hands  of 
British  Tories.  But  this  censure,  for  the  most  part,  was 
as  empty  as  the  ravings  of  the  particular  bigot  who  in- 
dorsed on  the  first  page  of  a  volume  of  letters  in  the 
Public  Record  Office,  in  London,  a  statement  that  the 
thirteen  letters  of  Doctor  Franklin  in  the  volume  were 
perhaps  then  "only  precious  or  Important  so  far  as  they 
prove  and  discover  the  Duplicity,  Ingratitude,  and  Guilt 
of  this  Arch  Traitor  whom  they  unveil  and  really  unmask 
Displaying  him  as  an  accomplish'd  Proficient  in  the 
blacker  Arts  of  Dissimulation  and  Guile."  Not  less 
hollow  was  the  invective  with  which  the  distempered 
mind  of  Arthur  Lee  assailed  the  character  of  Franklin 
when  they  were  together  in  France.  Nor  can  it  be  denied 
that  in  such  Rabelaisian  jeux  oV esprit  as  Polly  Baker's 
Speech,  the  Letter  on  the  Choice  of  a  Mistress,  and  the 
Essay  on  Perfumes,  dedicated  to  the  Royal  Academy  of 
Brussels,  in  the  naivete  which  marked  Franklin's  relations 


18         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

to  his  natural  son,  William  Franklin,  and  to  his  natural 
son's  natural  son,  William  Temple  Franklin,  and  in  the 
ease  with  which  he  adopted  in  his  old  age  the  tone,  if 
not  the  practices,  of  French  gallantry,  we  cannot  but 
recognize  a  nature  too  deficient  in  the  refinements  of 
early  social  training,  too  physically  ripe  for  sensual  en- 
joyment and  too  unfettered  in  its  intellectual  movements 
to  be  keenly  mindful  of  some  of  the  nicer  obligations  of 
scrupulous  conduct.  In  moral  dignity,  Franklin  was 
not  George  Washington,  though  there  was  no  one  held 
in  higher  honor  by  him.  "If  it  were  a  Sceptre,  he  has 
merited  it,  and  would  become  it,"  he  said  in  bequeathing 
a  fine  crab-tree  walking  stick  to  Washington,  whom  he 
termed  "My  friend,  and  the  friend  of  mankind."  If  for 
no  other  reason,  Franklin  was  not  Washington  because 
he  lacked  the  family  traditions  and  early  social  advan- 
tages of  Washington,  and  perhaps  Washington  might 
have  been  more  like  Franklin,  if  he  had  had  some  of 
Franklin's  humor.  While  the  resemblance  is  limited, 
Franklin  does  resemble  in  some  respects  Jefferson  who 
was  too  scientific  in  spirit  and  too  liberal  in  his  opinions 
not  to  be  a  little  of  a  skeptic  and  a  heretic  himself.  But 
nothing  can  be  more  certain  than  the  fact  that  Franklin 
was  esteemed  by  his  contemporaries  not  only  a  great 
but  a  good  man.  We  pass  by  the  French  extrava- 
gance which  made  him  out  a  paragon  of  all  the  virtues 
as  well  as  the  plus  grand  philosophe  du  siecle;  for  the 
French  were  but  mad  idolaters  where  he  was  concerned. 
It  is  sufficient  for  our  purposes  to  limit  ourselves  to  his 
English  and  American  panegyrists.  Referring  to  Frank- 
lin's humble  birth,  Benjamin  Vaughan,  a  dull  but  good 
man,  wrote  to  him  that  he  proved  "how  little  necessary 
all  origin  is  to  happiness,  virtue,  or  greatness."  In  an- 
other place,  Vaughan  speaks  of  the  "affection,  gratitude 
and  veneration"  he  bears  to  Franklin.  To  the  sober 
Quaker,  Abel  James,  the  author  of  the  Autobiography 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    19 

was  the  "kind,  humane,  and  benevolent  Ben.  Franklin'* 
whose  work  almost  insensibly  led  the  youth  "into  the 
resolution  of  endeavoring  to  become  as  good  and  eminent" 
as  himself.  In  urging  Franklin  to  complete  the  story  of 
his  life,  he  added:  "I  know  of  no  character  living,  nor 
many  of  them  put  together,  who  has  so  much  in  his  power 
as  thyself  to  promote  a  greater  spirit  of  industry  and 
early  attention  to  business,  frugality,  and  temperance 
with  the  American  youth."  As  Franklin's  letters  bring 
to  our  knowledge  friend  after  friend  of  his,  among  the 
wisest  and  best  men  of  his  day,  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic,  we  begin  to  ask  ourselves  whether  anyone  ever 
did  have  such  a  genius  for  exciting  the  sentiment  of  true, 
honest  friendship  in  virtuous  and  useful  men.  His 
correspondence  with  Catherine  Ray,  Polly  Stevenson,  and 
Georgiana  Shipley,  though  several  of  his  letters  to  the 
first  of  the  three  are  blemished  by  the  freedom  of  the 
times  and  vulgar  pleasantry,  demonstrates  that  his  ca- 
pacity for  awakening  this  sentiment  was  not  confined  to  his 
own  sex.  Inclined  as  he  was  in  his  earlier  and  later  years, 
to  use  Madame  Brillon's  phrase,  to  permit  his  wisdom  to 
be  broken  upon  the  rocks  of  femininity,  unbecoming  his 
advanced  age  and  high  position  as  was  the  salacious 
strain  which  ran  through  his  letters  to  this  beautiful  and 
brilliant  woman,  as  we  shall  see  hereafter,  nothing  could 
illustrate  better  than  his  relations  to  Polly  Stevenson 
how  essentially  incorrupt  his  heart  was  when  his  associa- 
tion was  with  any  member  of  the  other  sex  who  really 
had  modesty  to  lose.  Such  was  the  pure  affection  enter- 
tained for  him  by  this  fine  woman  that,  after  the  death  of 
her  celebrated  husband,  Dr.  William  Hewson,  she  re- 
moved from  London  to  Philadelphia  with  her  children  to 
be  near  the  friend,  little  less  than  a  father,  who  had 
lavished  upon  her  all  that  was  best  in  both  his  mind  and 
heart.  There  is  much  in  the  life  of  Franklin  to  make  us 
believe  that  his  standards  of  sexual  morality  were  entirely 


20         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

too  lax,  but  there  is  everything  in  it,  too,  to  make  us 
believe  that  he  would  not  only  have  been  incapable  of 
seducing  female  innocence  but  would  have  been  slow  to 
withhold  in  any  regard  the  full  meed  of  deferential  respect 
due  to  a  chaste  girl  or  a  virtuous  matron.  /It  is  hard  to 
repress  a  smile  when  we  read  under  the  head  of  "Hu- 
mility" in  his  Table  of  Virtues,  just  below  the  words,  in 
which,  under  the  head  of  "Chastity,"  he  deprecates  the 
use  of  "venery"  to  the  injury  of  one's  own  or  another's 
peace  or  reputation,  the  injunction  for  his  own  guidance, 
"imitate  Jesus  and  Socrates."  All  the  same,  it  is  a  fact 
that  one  person,  at  any  rate,  Jane  Mecom,  his  sister, 
even  thought  him  not  unworthy  to  be  compared  with  our 
Saviour.  "I  think,"  she  said,  "it  is  not  profanity  to 
compare  you  to  our  Blessed  Saviour  who  employed  much 
of  his  time  while  here  on  earth  in  doing  good  to  the  body 
as  well  as  souls  of  men."  Elizabeth  Hubbard,  the  step- 
daughter of  his  brother  John,  even  warned  him  that,  if 
he  was  not  less  zealous  in  doing  good,  he  would  find  him- 
self alone  in  heaven.  Through  all  the  observations  of 
his  contemporaries  vibrates  the  note  that  he  was  too  wise 
and  benevolent  to  belong  to  anything  less  than  the  entire 
human  race.  Jonathan  Shipley,  "The  Good  Bishop," 
suggested  as  a  motto  suitable  to  his  character,  "his 
country's  friend,  but  more  of  human  kind."  Burke 
called  him  "the  lover  of  his  species."  By  Sir  Samuel 
Romilly  he  was  pronounced  "one  of  the  best  and  most 
eminent  men  of  the  present  age."  Chatham  eulogized 
him  in  the  House  of  Lords  as  one  "whom  all  Europe  held 
in  high  Estimation  for  his  Knowledge  and  Wisdom,  and 
rank'd  with  our  Boyles  and  Newtons;  who  was  an  Honour, 
not  to  the  English  Nation  only,  but  to  Human  Nature." 
In  one  of  his  works,  Lord  Karnes  spoke  of  him  as  "a  man 
who  makes  a  great  figure  in  the  learned  world;  and  who 
would  make  a  still  greater  figure  for  benevolence  and 
candor,  were  virtue  as  much   regarded  in   this    declin- 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    21 

ing  age  as  knowledge.'  •  Less  formal  was  the  heartfelt 
tribute  of  Dr.  Samuel  Cooper,  of  Massachusetts,  after 
many  years  of  intercourse:  "Your  friendship  has  united 
two  things  in  my  bosom  that  seldom  meet,  pride  and 
consolation:  it  has  been  the  honor  and  the  balm  of  my 
life."  And  when  towards  the  close  of  Franklin's  life 
he  wrote  to  George  Washington,  "In  whatever  State  of 
Existence  I  am  plac'd  hereafter,  if  I  retain  any  Memory 
of  what  has  pass'd  here,  I  shall  with  it  retain  the  Esteem, 
Respect,  and  Affection,  with  which  I  have  long  been,  my 
dear  Friend,  yours  most  sincerely,"  he  received  a  reply, 
which  was  not  only  a  reply,  but  the  stately,  measured 
judgment  of  a  man  who  never  spoke  any  language  except 
that  of  perfect  sincerity.  "If,"  said  Washington,  "to 
be  venerated  for  benevolence,  if  to  be  admired  for  talents, 
if  to  be  esteemed  for  patriotism,  if  to  be  beloved  for  phi- 
lanthropy, can  gratify  the  human  mind,  you  mu&t-liave 
the  pleasing  consolation  to  know,  that  you  have  not  lived 
in  vain."  "And  I  flatter  myself,"  he  continued,  "that 
it  will  not  be  ranked  among  the  least  grateful  occurrences 
of  your  life  to  be  assured  that,  so  long  as  I  retain  my 
memory,  you  will  be  recollected  with  respect,  veneration, 
and  affection  by  your  sincere  friend."  These  were  cre- 
dentials indeed  for  the  old  printer  to  take  with  him  on 
his  journey  to  the  bright  orbs  which  it  was  a  part  of  his 
early  religious  fantasies  to  believe  were  swayed  by  Gods 
intermediate  in  the  scale  of  intelligent  existence  between 
ourselves  and  the  "one  Supreme,  most  Perfect  Being, 
Author  and  Father  of  the  Gods  themselves."1 

1  The  superlative  eulogy  of  Franklin  is  that  of  Josiah  Quincy,  Junior, 
who  expressed  his  conviction  in  his  journal  that  Franklin  was  one  of  the 
wisest  and  best  of  men  upon  earth ;  one,  of  whom  it  might  be  said  that  this 
world  was  not  worthy.  Of  course,  no  man  capable  of  creating  such  a 
conviction  as  this  was  safe  from  "the  wolf's  black  jaw  and  the  dull  ass' 
hoof."  Capefigue  in  his  Memoirs  of  Louis  XVI.  called  Franklin  "one  of 
the  great  charlatans"  of  his  age.  This  is  the  language  of  a  man  who 
finds  a  phrase  and  thinks  he  has  found  a  fact.     Arthur  Lee  said  on  one 


22         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

It  is,  we  repeat,  the  Autobiography  which  is  mainly 
responsible  for  the  unfavorable  impressions  that  have 
been  formed  about  the  character  of  Franklin.  It  is  there 
that  we  learn  what  heady  liquor  his  sprightly  mind  and 
free  spirit  quaffed  from  the  cup  of  boyhood  and  what 
errata  blurred  the  fair,  fresh  page  of  his  early  manhood. 
It  is  there  that  he  has  told  us  how,  as  the  result  of 
his  written  attacks  upon  the  Established  Order,  Puritan 
Boston  began  to  consider  him  in  an  unfavorable  light 
"  as  a  young  genius  that  had  a  turn  for  libelling  and  satyr" ; 
how  his  indiscreet  disputations  about  religion  caused  him 
to  be  pointed  at  with  horror  by  good  people  in  the  same 
starch  town  as  an  infidel  or  atheist;  how  he  availed  him- 
self of  a  fraud  in  the  second  indentures  of  apprentice- 
ship between  his  brother  and  himself  to  claim  his  freedom 
before  his  time  was  up ;  how;  in  distant  London,  he  forgot 
the  troth  that  he  had  plighted  to  Deborah  Read ;  how  he 
attempted  familiarities  with  the  mistress  of  his  friend 
Ralph  which  she  repulsed  with  a  proper  resentment; 
how  he  broke  into  the  money  which  Mr.  Vernon  had 
authorized  him  to  collect;  how  he  brought  over  Collins 
and  Ralph  to  his  own  free-thinking  ways;  how  he  became 
involved  in  some  foolish  intrigues  with  low  women  which 
from  the  expense  were  rather  more  prejudicial  to  him  than 
to  them.  It  is  in  the  Autobiography  also  that  we  learn 
from  him  how  he  thought  that  the  daughter  of  Mrs. 
Godfrey's  relation  should  bring  him  as  his  wife  enough 
money  to  discharge  the  remainder  of  the  debt  on  his 


occasion  that  Franklin  was  "the  meanest  of  all  mean  men,  the  most  cor- 
rupt of  all  corrupt  men";  but  this  was  merely  the  froth  of  a  rabid  mental 
condition.  Stephen  Sayre  wrote  to  Capellen  that  Franklin  was  a  "great 
villain,"  but  Sayre  had  unsuccessfully  solicited  office  from  Franklin. 
Besides,  this  extraordinary  character  seems  to  have  nearly,  if  not  quite, 
answered  Franklin's  description  of  a  man  who  has  neither  good  sense 
enough  to  be  an  honest  man  nor  wit  enough  for  a  rogue.  The  only  one 
of  Franklin's  slanderers  whose  arrow  hit  anywhere  near  the  mark  was 
an  anonymous  French  poet  who  termed  him  "Cameleon  Octogenaire." 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    23 

printing  house  even  if  her  parents  had  to  mortgage  their 
house  in  the  loan  office;  how  partly  by  sheer  force  and 
pinching  economy  and  partly  by  dexterity  and  finesse, 
sometimes  verging  upon  cunning,  he  pushed  himself 
further  and  further  along  the  road  to  fortune,  and  finally 
how  he  was  so  successful  with  the  help  of  his  Art  of  Virtue, 
despite  occasional  stumblings  and  slips,  in  realizing  his 
dream  of  moral  perfection  as  to  be  able  to  write  compla- 
cently upon  the  margin  of  the  Autobiography,  "  nothing 
so  likely  to  make  a  man's  fortune  as  virtue."  It  is  things 
like  these  in  the  Autobiography  that  have  tended  to  create 
in  minds,  which  know  Franklin  only  in  this  narrative, 
the  idea  that  he  was  a  niggard,  a  squalid  utilitarian  and 
even  a  little  of  a  rogue;  though  the  same  Autobiography 
witnesses  also  that  he  was  not  so  engrossed  with  his  own 
selfish  interests  as  not  to  find  time  for  the  enlarged  pro- 
jects of  public  utility  which  to  this  day  render  it  almost 
impossible  for  us  to  think  of  Philadelphia  without  recall- 
ing the  figure  of  Franklin.  Si  monumentum  requiris 
circumspice,  was  the  proud  inscription  placed  over  the 
grave  of  Sir  Christopher  Wren  in  the  city  where  his  genius 
had  designed  so  many  edifices.  The  same  inscription 
might  be  aptly  placed  over  the  grave  of  Franklin  in 
Christ  Church  yard  in  the  city  where  his  public  spirit 
and  wisdom  laid  the  foundations  of  so  much  that  has 
proved  enduring. 

There  is  unquestionably  a  shabby  side  to  the  Auto- 
biography, despite  the  inspiring  sacrifice  of  his  physical 
wants  which  Franklin  made  in  his  boyhood  to  gratify 
his  intellectual  cravings,  the  high  promptings  which  the 
appetites  and  unregulated  impulses  of  his  unguarded 
youth  were  powerless  to  stifle,  the  dauntless  resolution 
and  singleness  of  purpose  with  which  he  defied  and  con- 
quered his  adverse  star,  the  wise  moderation  of  his  hour 
of  victory,  the  disinterested  and  splendid  forms  of  social 
service  to  which  he  devoted  his  sagacious  and  fruitful 


24        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

mind,  his  manly  hatred  of  injustice  and  cruelty,  his 
fidelity  to  the  popular  cause  which  neither  flattery  could 
cajole  nor  power  overawe.  In  its  mixture  of  what  is 
noble  with  what  is  ignoble  the  Autobiography  reminds  us 
of  the  merchandise  sold  at  the  new  printing-office  near 
the  Market  in  Philadelphia,  where  Franklin  conducted 
his  business  as  a  printer  and  a  merchant,  where  his  wife, 
Deborah,  assisted  him  by  folding  and  stitching  pamphlets, 
tending  shop  and  purchasing  old  linen  rags,  and  where 
his  mother-in-law,  Mrs.  Read,  compounded  her  sovereign 
remedy  against  the  itch  and  lice.  Now  it  was  a  transla- 
tion of  Cato's  Moral  Distichs  or  a  pamphlet  against 
slavery  fresh  from  his  own  press,  now  it  was  a  copy  of 
some  devotional  or  useful  work  which  the  last  packet 
had  brought  over  from  London,  now  it  was  a  lot  of  goose 
feathers,  or  old  rags,  or  a  likely  young  negro  wench. 
But  on  the  whole  we  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  calm 
view,  which  Franklin  himself,  in  the  cool  of  the  evening 
of  his  life,  takes  of  the  early  part  of  his  existence,  was, 
with  some  qualifications,  not  far  wrong.  Notwithstand- 
ing the  dangerous  season  of  youth  and  the  hazardous 
situations,  in  which  he  was  sometimes  placed  among 
strangers,  when  he  was  remote  from  the  eye  and  advice 
of  his  sterling  father,  Josiah  Franklin,  he  believed,  as 
we  know  from  the  Autobiography,  that  he  had  not  fallen 
into  any  "willful  gross  immorality  or  injustice";  and, 
start  as  the  student  of  Franklin  may  at  times  at  things 
which  might  chill  for  the  moment  the  enthusiasm  of  even 
such  a  Boswellian  as  the  late  John  Bigelow,  to  whose  edi- 
torial services  the  reputation  of  Franklin  is  so  deeply 
indebted,  he  is  likely  in  his  final  estimate  to  find  himself 
in  very  much  the  same  mood  as  that  which  impelled 
Franklin  in  the  Autobiography  to  make  the  famous  decla- 
ration, so  true  to  his  normal  and  intensely  vital  nature, 
that,  were  it  offered  to  his  choice,  he  "should  have  no 
objection  to  a  repetition  of  the  same  life  from  its  begin- 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    25 

ning,  only  asking  the  advantages  authors  have  in  a  second 
edition  to  correct  some  faults  of  the  first."  Be  this  as 
it  may,  it  is  at  least  safe  to  say  that  it  is  very  unfair  to 
judge  the  character  of  Franklin  by  the  Autobiography 
without  bearing  in  mind  one  of  the  leading  motives  by 
which  he  was  induced  to  write  his  own  life.  To  his  great 
honor  it  can  be  said  that  to  do  good  in  the  higher  social 
sense,  to  promote  the  lasting  interests  of  humanity,  to 
free  the  march  of  the  race  from  every  handicap,  every 
impediment,  whether  arising  in  or  outside  of  ourselves, 
to  instruct,  to  enlighten,  were  the  dominant  incentives, 
the  mellow,  yet  commanding  passions  of  his  existence. 
Like  many  another  philosopher  before  and  since,  in  his 
zeal  to  subserve  the  general  interest  he  forgot  himself. 
If  other  young  men  treading  in  his  footsteps  could  be 
deterred  by  the  warnings  of  his  errors  from  becoming 
involved  in  the  mistakes  and  moral  lapses  in  which  his 
youth  and  inexperience  were  involved,  he  was  willing, 
though  not  without  some  misgivings,  to  lay  before  them 
and  the  whole  world  all  the  details  of  these  errors.  In 
composing  the  Autobiography,  he  was  influenced  to  no 
little  degree  by  the  spirit  of  a  man  who  bequeaths  his 
own  body  to  the  surgeons  for  the  advancement  of  science. 
If  his  reputation  suffered  by  his  tender  of  himself  as  a 
corpus  vile  for  the  benefit  of  future  generations,  he  was 
prepared  to  take  this  risk,  as  he  was  prepared  to  take  the 
risks  of  the  two  electric  shocks,  which  nearly  cost  him 
his  life,  in  the  promotion  of  human  knowledge.  It  is 
impossible  for  anyone,  who  is  not  familiar  with  the  perfect 
lack  of  selfish  reserve  brought  by  Franklin  to  the  pursuit 
of  truth  or  the  universal  interests  of  mankind,  to  under- 
stand the  extent  to  which,  in  composing  the  Autobiography, 
he  was  moved  by  generous  considerations  of  this  sort. 
In  no  other  production  of  his  did  he  show  the  same  dis- 
position to  turn  the  seamier  side  of  his  existence  to  the 
light  for  the  simple  reason  that  no  other  production  of 


26         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

his  was  written  with  the  same  homiletic  purpose  as  the 
Autobiography.  And,  if  this  purpose  had  not  been  so 
strong  upon  him,  how  easy  it  would  have  been  for  him 
by  a  little  judicious  suppression  here  and  a  few  soften- 
ing touches  there  to  have  altered  the  whole  face  of  the 
Autobiography,  and  to  have  rendered  it  as  faithless  a  tran- 
script of  the  slips  and  blots  of  his  life  as  are  most  auto- 
biographies of  human  beings — even  those  of  men  who 
have  enjoyed  a  high  repute  for  moral  excellence — in 
their  relations  to  the  indiscretions,  the  follies  and  the  trans- 
gressions of  their  immaturer  years!  At  any  rate,  of  the 
offences  of  Franklin,  mentioned  in  the  Autobiography, 
may  be  said  what  cannot  be  said  of  the  similar  offences 
of  many  men.  He  handsomely  atoned  for  them  all  so 
far  as  the  opportunity  to  atone  for  them  arose.  It  was 
undoubtedly  a  serious  breach  of  the  moral  law  for  him 
to  have  begotten  William  Franklin  out  of  lawfr 1  wedlock, 
and  in  the  impartial  affection,  which  he  publicly  bestowed 
upon  his  illegitimate  son. and v his  legitimate  daughter, 
we  see  another  illustration  of  his  insensibility  to  the 
finer  inflections  of  human  scruples.  But  when  we  see 
him  accept  this  illegitimate  son  as  if  he  had  come  to  him 
over  his  right  shoulder  instead  of  his  left,  take  him  under 
his  family  roof,  give  him  every  advantage  that  education 
and  travel  could  confer,  seek  an  honorable  alliance  for 
him,  put  him  in  the  way  to  become  the  Governor  of 
Colonial  New  Jersey,  even  affectionately  recognize  his 
illegitimate  son  as  a  grandson,  we  almost  feel  as  if 
such  ingenuous  naturalism  had  a  kind  of  bastard  moral 
value  of  its  own. 

The  Autobiography  is  interesting  in  every  respect  but 
in  none  more  so  than  in  relation  to  the  System  of  Morals 
adopted  by  Franklin  for  his  self-government  in  early 
life,  when,  to  use  his  own  words  in  that  work,  he  "  con- 
ceived the  bold  and  arduous  project  of  arriving  at  moral 
perfection."     This  project  once  formed,  he  went  about 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    27 

its  execution  in  a  manner  as  strictly  mechanical  as  if  he 
had  been  rectifying  a  smoky  chimney  or  devising  a  help- 
ful pair  of  glasses  for  his  defective  eyesight.  The  virtues 
were  classified  by  him  under  thirteen  heaols :  Temperance, 
Silence,  Order,  Resolution,  Frugality,  Industry,  Sincer- 
ity, Justice,  Moderation,  Cleanliness,  Tranquillity,  Chas- 
tity and  Humility.  These  terms  were  all  tabulated  by 
him  in  a  little  pocketbook  kept  for  that  especial  purpose, 
and  to  each  virtue  the  close  attention  of  a  week  was 
successively  given  by  him.  If  an  offence  was  committed 
by  him  on  a  certain  day,  it  was  entered  by  a  little  black 
mark  under  that  date  opposite  the  affronted  virtue. 
The  object  was  to  so  concentrate  his  vigilance  upon  each 
virtue  in  turn  and  to  so  strengthen  his  capacity  to  resist 
every  temptation  to  violate  it  as  to  finally  render  its 
practice  habitual  and  instinctive.  The  plan  in  spirit 
was  not  ''i&like  the  system  of  prudential  algebra  to  which 
he  told  Joseph  Priestley,  many  years  afterwards,  that  he 
resorted  when  his  judgment  was  in  a  state  of  uncertainty 
about  some  problem,  /hi  one  column  he  would  jot  down 
on  a  piece  of  paper  all  the  pros  of  the  case,  and  in  another 
all  the  cons,  and  then,  by  appraising  the  relative  value  of 
each  pro  and  con  set  down  before  his  eye,  and  cancelling 
equivalent  considerations,  decide  upon  which  side  the 
preponderance  of  the  argument  lay.  Even  Franklin 
himself  admits  that  his  plan  for  making  an  automatic 
maehine  of  virtue  did  not  work  in  every  respect:  Order 
J*e  experienced  extreme  difficulty  in  acquiring.  Indeed, 
this  virtue  was  so  much  against  his  grain  that  he  felt 
inclined  to  content  himself  with  only  a  partial  measure 
of  fidelity  to  it,  like  the  man,  he  said  in  the  Autobiography, 
who,  though  at  first  desirous  of  having  his  whole  ax 
bright,  grew  so  tired  of  turning  the  grindstone  on  which 
it  was  being  polished  that  when  the  smith,  who  was 
holding  it,  remarked  that  it  was  only  speckled-,  and  asked 
him  to  turn  on,  he  replied,  "But  I  think  I  like  a  speckled 


28        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

ax  best."  The  Humility,  too,  which  Franklin  acquired, 
he  was  disposed  to  think  was  more  specious  than  real. 
Pride,  he  moralizes  in  the  Autobiography,  is  perhaps  the 
hardest  of  our  natural  passions  to  subdue,  and  even,  if 
he  could  conceive  that  he  had  completely  overcome  it, 
he  would  probably,  he  thought,  be  proud  of  his  humility. 
This  reminds  us  of  his  other  observation  in  the  Auto- 
biography that  he  gave  vanity  fair  quarter  wherever  he 
met  with  it,  and  that,  in  many  cases,  it  would  not  be 
altogether  absurd  if  a  man  were  to  thank  God  for  his 
vanity  among  the  other  comforts  of  life.  In  the  effort, 
however,  to  acquire  Humility,  Franklin  did,  he  informs 
us  in  the  same  work,  acquire,  as  time  wore  on,  the  habit 
of  expressing  his  opinions  in  such  conciliatory  forms  that 
no  one  perhaps  for  fifty  years  past  had  ever  heard  a 
dogmatic  expression  escape  him.  "And  to  this  habit 
(after  my  character  of  integrity),"  he  declares,  "I  think 
it  principally  owing  that  I  had  early  so  much  weight  with 
my  fellow  citizens  when  I  proposed  new  institutions,  or 
alterations  in  the  old,  and  so  much  influence  in  public 
councils  when  I  became  a  member;  for  I  was  but  a  bad 
speaker,  never  eloquent,  subject  to  much  hesitation  in 
my  choice  of  words,  hardly  correct  in  language,  and  yet 
I  generally  carried  my  points."  On  the  whole,  even 
though  Franklin  did  find  Order  and  Humility  not  easy 
of  attainment,  he  was  very  well  satisfied  with  the  results 
of  his  plan  for  imparting  the  force  of  habit  to  virtue.  In 
his  seventy-ninth  year  the  former  tradesman  sat  down 
to  count  deliberately  his  moral  gains.  To  his  "little 
artifice"  with  the  blessing  of  God  he  owed,  he  felt,  the 
constant  felicity  of  his  life  until  that  time.  To  Temper- 
ance he  ascribed  his  long-continued  health  and  what 
was  still  left  to  him  of  a  good  constitution;  to  Industry 
and  Frugality  the  early  easiness  of  his  circumstances 
and  the  acquisition  of  his  fortune  with  all  that  knowledge 
that  enabled  him  to  be  a  useful  citizen  and  obtained  for 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    29 

him  some  degree  of  reputation  among  the  learned;  to 
Sincerity  and  Justice  the  confidence  of  his  country  and 
the  honorable  employs  it  conferred  upon  him;  and  to  the 
joint  influence  of  the  whole  mass  of  the  virtues,  even  in 
the  imperfect  state  that  he  was  able  to  acquire  them, 
all  that  evenness  of  temper  and  that  cheerfulness  in  con- 
versation which  made  his  company  still  sought  for  and 
agreeable  even  to  his  younger  acquaintance.  From  other 
expressions  of  his  in  the  Autobiography  we  are  left  to  infer 
that  he  believed  that  Frugality  and  Industry,  by  freeing 
him  from  the  residue  of  the  debt  on  his  printing  house  and 
producing  affluence  and  independence,  had  made  more  easy 
the  practice  of  sincerity  and  justice  and  the  like  by  him. 

So  highly  did  Franklin  esteem  his  method  that  he 
intended  to  follow  it  up  with  a  treatise,  to  be  known  as 
the  Art  of  Virtue,  containing  a  practical  commentary 
upon  each  of  the  virtues  inserted  in  his  little  book,  and 
showing  just  how  anyone  could  make  himself  virtuous, 
if  he  only  had  a  mind  to.  In  this  treatise,  it  was  his  desire, 
he  says  in  the  Autobiography,  to  expound  the  doctrine 
that  vicious  actions  are  not  hurtful  because  they  are 
forbidden  but  forbidden  because  they  are  hurtful,  the 
nature  of  man  alone  considered,  and  that  it  is  therefore 
to  the  interest  of  everyone  to  be  virtuous  who  wishes  to 
be  happy  even  in  this  world.  "I  should  from  this  cir- 
cumstance," he  said,  "  (there  being  always  in  the  world 
a  number  of  rich  merchants,  nobility,  states,  and  princes, 
who  have  need  of  honest  instruments  for  the  management 
of  their  affairs,  and  such  being  so  rare),  have  endeavoured 
to  convince  young  persons  that  no  qualities  were  so  likely 
to  make  a  poor  man's  fortune  as  those  of  probity  and 
integrity.' '  The  thought  was  more  fully  developed  in  a 
letter  to  Lord  Karnes,  dated  May  3,  1760. 

I  purpose  likewise  [he  said],  a  little  work  for  the  benefit  of 
youth,  to  be  called  the  Art  of  Virtue.     From  the  title  I  think 


30        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

you  will  hardly  conjecture  what  the  nature  of  such  a  book 
may  be.  I  must  therefore  explain  it  a  little.  Many  people 
lead  bad  lives  that  would  gladly  lead  good  ones,  but  know 
not  how  to  make  the  change.  They  have  frequently  resolved 
and  endeavoured  it;  but  in  vain,  because  their  endeavours 
have  not  been  properly  conducted.  To  expect  people  to  be 
good,  to  be  just,  to  be  temperate,  &c,  without  shewing  them 
how  they  should  become  so,  seems  like  the  ineffectual  charity 
mentioned  by  the  Apostle,  which  consisted  in  saying  to  the 
hungry,  the  cold,  and  the  naked,  "Be  ye  fed,  be  ye  warmed, 
be  ye  clothed,"  without  shewing  them  how  they  should  get 
food,  fire,  or  clothing. 

Most  people  have  naturally  some  virtues,  but  none  have 
naturally  all  the  virtues.  To  acquire  those  that  are  wanting, 
and  secure  what  we  acquire,  as  well  as  those  we  have  natu- 
rally, is  the  subject  of  an  art.  It  is  as  properly  an  art  as 
painting,  navigation,  or  architecture.  If  a  man«would  become 
a  painter,  navigator,  or  architect,  it  is  not  enough  that  he  is 
advised  to  be  one,  that  he  is  convinced  by  the  arguments  of  his 
adviser,  that  it  would  be  for  his  advantage  to  be  one,  and  that 
he  resolves  to  be  one,  but  he  must  also  be  taught  the  principles 
of  the  art,  be  shewn  all  the  methods  of  working,  and  how  to 
acquire  the  habits  of  using  properly  all  the  instruments; 
and  thus  regularly  and  gradually  he  arrives,  by  practice, 
at  some  perfection  in  the  art. 

The  virtue,  which  this  new  art  was  to  fabricate,  was 
obviously  too  much  in  keeping  with  the  national  tendency 
to  turn  over  tasks  of  every  sort  to  self-directed  machinery. 
The  Art  of  Virtue,  however,  was  never  actually  penned, 
owing  to  the  demands  of  private  and  public  business  upon 
Franklin's  time,  and  the  world  was  consequently  left  to 
get  along  as  it  best  could  with  virtue  of  the  old  impulsive 
and  untutored  type.  We  are  also  apprised  in  the  Auto- 
biography that  the  Art  of  Virtue  itself  was  to  be  but  an 
incident  of  a  great  and  extensive  project  which  likewise 
never  reached  maturity  for  the  same  reasons  that  arrested 
the  completion  of  that  work.     This  project  was  the  forma- 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    31 

tion  of  a  United  Party  for  Virtue,  to  be  composed  of 
virtuous  "men  of  all  nations  under  the  government  of 
suitable  good  and  wise  rules.  The  conditions  of  initia- 
tion into  this  body,  which  was  to  move  on  sin  and  debt 
throughout  the  world  with  embattled  ranks  and  flying 
banners,  were  to  be  the  acceptance  of  Franklin's  final 
religious  creed,  of  which  we  shall  have  something  to  say 
presently,  and  the  continuous  practice  for  thirteen  weeks 
of  Franklin's  moral  regimen;  and  the  members  were  to 
engage  to  afford  their  advice,  assistance  and  support  to 
each  other  in  promoting  one  another's  interests,  business 
and  advancement  in  life.  For  ^distinction,  the  associa- 
tion was  to  be  called  The  Society  of  the  Free  and  Easy, 
"free,  as  being,  by  the  general  practice  and  habit  of  the 
virtues,  free  from  the  dominion  of  vice;  and  particularly 
by  the  practice  of  industry  and  frugality,  free  from  debt, 
which  exposes  a  man  to  confinement,  and  a  species  of 
slavery  to  his  creditors."  It  is  in  the  Autobiography  also 
that  Franklin  states  that  he  filled  the  spaces  between  the 
remarkable  days  in  the  calendar  in  his  Poor  Richard's 
Almanac  with  proverbial  sentences,  chiefly  such  as  incul- 
cated industry  and  frugality,  "as  the  means,"  he  declared, 
"of  procuring  wealth,  and  thereby  securing  virtue;  it 
being  more  difficult  for  a  man  in  want,  to  act  always 
honestly,  as,  to  use  here  one  of  those  proverbs,  it  is  hard 
for  an  empty  sack  to  stand  upright,111 

1  Franklin  was  as  fearless  in  applying  his  ethical  principles  to  himself 
as  to  others.  After  telling  his  sister  Jane  in  a  letter,  dated  Dec.  30,  1770, 
that  he  trusted  that  no  apprehension  of  removal  from  his  office,  as  Post- 
master would  make  the  least  alteration  in  his  political  conduct,  he  *ises 
these  striking  words:  "My  rule,  in  which  I  have  always  found  satisfaction, 
is,  never  to  turn  aside  in  public  affairs  through  views  of  private  interest; 
but  to  go  straight  forward  in  doing  what  appears  to  me  right  at  the  time, 
leaving  the  consequences  with  Providence.  What  in  my  younger  days 
enabled  me  more  easily  to  walk  upright,  was,  that  I  had  a  trade,  and  that 
I  knew  I  could  live  upon  little;  and  thence  (never  having  had  views  of 
making  a  fortune)  I  was  free  from  avarice,  and  contented  with  the  plenti- 
ful supplies  my  business  afforded  me.    And  now  it  is  still  more  easy  for  me 


32         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

This  prudential  view  of  morality  also  found  utterance 
in  other  forms  in  the  writings  of  Franklin.  In  the  first 
of  the  two  graceful  dialogues  between  Philocles,  the  Man 
of  Reason  and  Virtue,  and  Horatio,  the  Man  of  Pleasure, 
which  appeared  in  the  Pennsylvania  Gazette,  the  former 
warns  the  latter  in  honeyed  words  that  he  would  lose 
even  as  a  man  of  pleasure,  if,  in  the  pursuit  of  pleasure, 
he  did  not  practice  self-denial,  by  taking  as  much  care  of 
his  future  as  his  present  happiness,  and  not  building  one 
upon  the  ruins  of  the  other;  all  of  which,  of  course,  was 
more  epigrammatically  embodied  in  that  other  injunction 
of  Poor  Richard,  "Deny  self  for  self's  sake."  No  wonder 
that  Horatio  was  so  delighted  with  a  theory  of  self-denial, 
which  left  him  still  such  a  comfortable  margin  for  sensual 
enjoyment,  that,  when  Philocles  bids  him  good  night,  he 
replies:  "  Adieu!  thou  enchanting  Reasoner!" 

"Money  makes  men  virtuous,  Virtue  makes  them 
happy";  this  is  perhaps  an  unfair  way  of  summarizing 
Franklin's  moral  precepts,  but  it  is  not  remote  from  fair- 
ness. "Truth  and  Sincerity,"  he  had  written  in  his 
Journal  of  a  Voyage  from  London  to  Philadelphia ,  when  he 
was  but  twenty  years  of  age,  "have  a  certain  distinguish- 
ing native  lustre  about  them,  which  cannot  be  perfectly 
counterfeited;  they  are  like  fire  and  flame,  that  cannot 
be  painted."  It  would  have  been  well  for  the  moralist 
of  later  years  to  have  remembered  this  statement  when 
he  made  up  his  mind  to  contract  the  habit  of  moral  per- 
fection. His  Milton,  from  which  he  borrowed  the  Hymn 
to  the  Creator  that  is  a  part  of  his  Articles  of  Belief  and 
Acts  of  Religion,  might  have  told  him, 


to  preserve  my  freedom  and  integrity,  when  I  consider  that  I  am  almost 
at  the  end  of  my  journey,  and  therefore  need  less  to  complete  the  expense 
of  it;  and  that  what  I  now  possess,  through  the  blessing  of  God,  may, 
with  tolerable  econom}',  be  sufficient  for  me  (great  misfortunes  excepted), 
though  I  should  add  nothing  more  to  it  by  any  office  or  employment 
whatsoever." 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    33 

"Virtue  could  see  to  do  what  Virtue  would 
By  her  own  radiant  light,  though  sun  and  moon 
Were  in  the  flat  sea  sunk," 

or  in  those  other  words  from  the  same  strains  of  supernal 
melody, 

"If  Virtue  feeble  were 
Heaven  itself  would  stoop  to  her." 

In  teaching  and  pursuing  a  system  of  morals,  which  was 
nothing  but  a  scheme  of  enlightened  selfishness,  dependent 
for  its  aliment  upon  pecuniary  ease  and  habit,  he  was 
simply  faithful  to  a  general  conception  of  life  and  char- 
acter entirely  too  earthbound  and  grovelling  to  satisfy 
those  higher  intuitions  and  ideals  which,  be  the  hard 
laws  of  our  material  being  what  they  may,  not  only  never 
permit  our  grosser  natures  to  be  at  peace,  but  reject 
with  utter  disdain  the  suggestion  that  they  and  our  vices 
and  infirmities  are  but  offshoots  of  the  same  parent  stock 
of  selfishness.  It  cannot  be  denied  that,  as  a  general 
rule,  a  man  with  some  money  is  less  urgently  solicited  to 
commit  certain  breaches  of  the  moral  law  than  a  man  with 
none,  or  that  we  should  be  in  a  bad  way,  indeed,  if  we 
did  not  have  the  ply  of  habit  as  well  as  the  whisper  of 
conscience  to  assist  us  in  the  struggle  between  good  and 
evil  that  is  ever  going  on  in  our  own  breasts.  But  the 
limited  freedom  from  temptation,  secured  by  the  posses- 
sion of  money,  and  the  additional  capacity  for  resisting 
temptation,  bred  by  good  habits,  are,  it  is  hardly  neces- 
sary to  say,  foundations  too  frail  to  support  alone  the 
moral  order  of  the  universe.  Beyond  money,  however 
conducive  it  may  be  in  some  respects  to  diminished 
temptation,  there  must  be  something  to  sweeten  the 
corrupting  influence  of  money.  Beyond  good  habits, 
however  desirable  as  aids  to  virtue,  there  must  be  some- 
thing to  create  and  sustain  good  habits.     This  thing  no 

VOL.  I — 3 


34        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

merely  politic  sense  of  moral  necessity  can  ever  be. 
Franklin's  idea  of  supplying  our  languid  moral  energies 
with  a  system  of  moral  practice  as  material  as  a  go-cart 
or  a  swimming  bladder  is  one,  it  is  safe  to  say,  upon 
which  neither  he  nor  anyone  else  could  build  a  character 
that  would,  as  Charles  Townsend  might  have  said,  be 
anything  but  "a  habit  of  lute  string — a  mere  thing  for 
summer  wear."  His  Art  of  Virtue  was  a  spurious,  pinch- 
beck, shoddy  substitute ,  for  the  real  virtue  which  has  its 
home  in  our  uninstructed  as  well  as  our  instructed  moral 
impulses;  and  for  one  man,  who  would  be  made  virtuous 
by  it,  ten,  we  dare  say,  would  be  likely  to  be  made  shallow 
formalists  or  canting  scamps.  It  is  a  pity  that  Poor 
Richard  did  not  make  more  of  that  other  time-honored 
maxim,  "Virtue  is  its  own  reward." 

Indeed,  we  shrewdly  suspect  that  even  Franklin's  idea 
that  he  was  such  a  debtor  to  his  factitious  system  of 
moral  practice  was  not  much  better  than  a  conceit.  The 
improvement  in  his  moral  character,  after  he  first  began 
to  carry  the  virtues  around  in  his  pocket,  is,  we  think, 
far  more  likely  to  have  been  due  to  the  natural  decline 
of  youthful  waywardness  and  dissent,  the  discipline  of 
steady  labor,  the  settling  and  sober  effects  of  domestic 
life  and  the  wider  vision  in  every  respect  in -our  relations 
to  the  world  which  comes  to  us  with  our  older  years.  It 
is  but  just  to  Franklin  to  say  that,  even  before  he  adopted 
his  "little  artifice,"  his  character  as  respects  the  virtues, 
which  he  specifically  names  as  having  had  a  hand  in  pro- 
ducing the  constant  felicity  of  his  life,  namely,  Temper- 
ance, Industry,  Frugality,  Sincerity  and  Justice  was,  so 
far  as  Temperance,  Industry  and  Frugality  were  con- 
cerned, exceptionally  good,  and,  so  far  as  Sincerity  and 
Justice  were  concerned,  not  subject  to  any  ineffaceable 
reproach.  In  truth,  even  he,  we  imagine,  would  have  ad- 
mitted with  a  laugh,  accompanied  perhaps  by  a  humorous 
story,    that    the    period    of   his    life,    before   his   dream 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    35 

of  moral  perfection  was  formed,  when  he  was  so  temperate 
>  as  to  be  known  to  his  fellow  printers  in  London  as  the 
11  Water  American,"  and  to  be  able  to  turn  from  the  com- 
mon diet  to  the  vegetarian,  and  back  again,  without 
the  slightest  inconvenience,  would  compare  quite  favor- 
ably with  the  period  of  his  life,  after  his  dream  of  moral 
perfection  had  been  formed,  when  he  had  to  confess  on 
one  occasion  to  Polly  Stevenson  that  he  had  drunk  more 
at  a  venison  feast  than  became  a  philosopher,  and  on 
another  to  his  friend,  John  Bartram  that,  if  he  could  find 
in  any  Italian  travels  a  recipe  for  making  Parmesan 
cheese,  it  would  give  him  more  satisfaction  than  a  tran- 
script of  any  inscription  from  any  old  stone  whatever. 
How  far  the  effect  of  his  moral  regimen  was  to  strengthen 
the  virtues  of  Silence,  Resolution,  Moderation,  Cleanli- 
ness and  Tranquillity  we  lack  sufficient  materials  for  a 
judgment.  These,  assuming  that  Cleanliness  must  have 
gone  along  with  such  an  eager  propensity  for  swimming 
as  his,  were  all  native  virtues  of  his  anyhow  we  should 
say.  But  as  to  Chastity  the  invigorating  quality  of  the 
regimen  is  certainly  open  to  the  most  serious  doubt.. 
There  is  only  too  much  in  the  correspondence  which  has 
survived  him  to  give  color  to  the  statement  of  John 
Adams  that  even  at  the  age  of  seventy-odd  he  had  neither 
lost  his  love  of  beauty  nor  his  taste  for  it.  When  we 
bear  this  in  mind  and  recall  what  he  had  to  say  in  the 
Autobiography  about  the  "hard-to-be-governed  passion 
of  youth,"  which  frequently  hurried  him  into  intrigues 
with  low  women  that  fell  in  his  way  before  he  resolved 
,  to  acquire  the  habit  of  chastity  with  the  aid  of  his  book, 
we  realize  that  the  artificial  scaffolding,  which  he  proposed 
to  build  up  around  his  character,  reasonably  enough 
broke  down  at  just  the  point  where  the  natural  vigor  of 
his  character  was  the  weakestv 

In  point  of  sexual  morality,  Franklin  was  no  better 
than  the  Europe  of  the  eighteenth  century;  distinctly 


\. 


36^        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

worse  than  the  America  of  that  century.  His  domestic 
affections  were  uncommonly  strong,  but  the  notable 
peculiarity  about  his  domestic  life  is  that  he  was  not  a 
whit  less  soberly  dutiful  in  his  irregular  than  in  his  regu- 
lar family  connections,  and  always  acted  as  if  the  nuptial 
ceremony  was  a  wholly  superfluous  form,  so  far  as  a 
proper  sense  of  marital  or  paternal  obligation,  or  the 
existence  of  deep,  unreserved  affection,  upon  the  part  of 
a  husband  or  father,  went.  His  lack  of  scruples  in  this 
respect  almost  reminds  us  of  the  question  put  by  his 
own  Polly  Baker,  when  she  was  prosecuted  the  fifth  time 
for  giving  birth  to  a  bastard:  "Can  it  be  a  crime  (in  the 
nature  of  things,  I  mean)  to  add  to  the  king's  subjects, 
in  a  new  country,  that  really  wants  people? "  Apparently 
no  ceremony  of  any  kind  ever  preceded  his  union  with 
Deborah,  though  accompanied  by  circumstances  of  co- 
habitation and  acknowledgment  which  unquestionably 
rendered  it  a  valid,  binding  marriage,  in  every  respect, 
under  the  liberal  laws  of  Pennsylvania.  He  simply 
remarks  in  the  Autobiography,  "I  took  her  to  wife,  Sep- 
tember I,  1730."  The  artlessness  with  which  he  extended 
the  full  measure  of  a  father's  recognition  to  William 
Franklin  excited  comment  abroad  as  well  as  at  home, 
and,  together  with  the  political  wounds  inflicted  by  him 
upon  the  official  arrogance  and  social  pride  of  the  Proprie- 
tary Party  in  Pennsylvania,  was  mainly  responsible  for 
the  opprobrium  in  which  his  memory  was  held  in  the 
higher  social  circles  of  Philadelphia  long  after  his  death. 
So  far  as  we  know,  there  is  nothing  in  his  utterances  or 
writings  to  indicate  that  the  birth  of  William  Franklin 
ever  caused  him  the  slightest  shame  or  embarrassment. 
His  dignity  of  character,  in  its  way,  it  has  been  truly 
said  by  Sydney  George  Fisher,  was  as  natural  and  instinc- 
tive as  that  of  Washington,  and,  in  its  relations  to  illegi- 
timacy, for  which  he  was  answerable,  seems  to  have  felt 
the  lack  of  conventional  support  as  little  as  our  first 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    37 

parents,  in  their  pristine  state,  did  the  lack  of  fig  leaves. 
He  accepted  his  natural  son  and  William  Temple  Franklin, 
William's  natural  son,  exactly  as  if  both  had  come  re- 
commended to  his  outspoken  affection  by  betrothal, 
honest  wedding  ring  and  all.  The  idea  that  any  stigma 
attached  to  either,  or  that  they  stood  upon  any  different 
footing  from  his  legitimate  daughter,  Sarah  Bache  and 
her  children,  was  something  that  his  mind  does  not  appear 
to  have  harbored  at  all.  His  attitude  towards  them 
was  as  unblushingly  natural  and  demonstrative,  to  get 
back  to  the  Garden  of  Eden,  as  the  mutual  caresses  of 
Adam  and  Eve  before  the  Fall  of  Man.  William  was 
born  a  few  months  after  the  marriage  of  Franklin  and 
Deborah,  and  his  father,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  took  him 
under  his  roof  with  as  little  constraint  as  if  his  introduc- 

-  tion  had  been  duly  provided  for  in  the  marriage  contract. 
Indeed,  John  Bigelow,  who  is  always  disposed,  in  the 
spirit  of  Franklin's  own  limping  lines  on  Deborah,  to 
deem  all  his  Joan's  faults  "exceedingly  small,"  rather 
ludicrously  observes:  "William  may  therefore  be  said 
to  have  been  born  in  wedlock,  though  he  was  not  reputed 
to  be  the  son  of  Mrs.  Franklin."  So  identified  did  he 
become  with  all  the  other  members  of  Franklin's  house- 

-  hold  that  Franklin  in  his  letters  not  only  frequently 
conveyed  "Billy's"  duty  to  his  "mother"  and  "Billy's" 
love  to  his  "sister"  but  on  one  occasion  at  least  even 
"Billy's"  duty  to  his  "grandmother,"  Mrs.  Read,  the 
mother  of  Mrs.  Franklin.  As  the  boy  outgrew  his  pony, 
of  which  we  obtain  a  pleasant  glimpse  in  a  "lost"  notice 
in  the  Pennsylvania  Gazette,  we  find  Franklin  in  a  letter 
to  his  own  mother,  Abiah  Franklin,  in  which  he  couples 
the  name  of  "Billy"  in  the  most  natural  way  with  that 

-  of  his  daughter  Sally,  saying:  "Will  is  now  nineteen  years 
of  age,  a  tall  proper  Youth,  and  much  of  a  Beau."  It 
was  with  William  Franklin,  when  Governor  of  New  Jer- 
sey, that  Sally  took  refuge  at  the  time  that  her  father's 


38         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

house  in  Philadelphia  was  threatened  with  destruction 
by  a  Stamp  Act  mob;  and  it  was  to  him  shortly  after- 
wards, when  the  tide  of  popular  approval  was  again 
running  in  favor  of  Franklin,  then  the  agent  of  Pennsyl- 
vania at  London,  that  she  dispatched  these  joyful  words : 
"Dear  Brother: — The  Old  Ticket  forever!  We  have  it  by 
J4  votes  I  God  bless  our  worthy  and  noble  agent,  and  all 
his  family!1'  Through  the  influence  of  his  father  the 
son  obtained  a  provincial  commission  which  brought 
him  some  military  experience,  and  also  filled  the  office 
of  Postmaster  at  Philadelphia,  and  afterwards  the  office 
of  Clerk  of  the  General  Assembly  of  Pennsylvania.  He 
was  with  Franklin  when  the  latter  sent  his  kite  on  its 
memorable  flight  into  the  skies;  when  he  visited  Brad- 
dock's  camp ;  and  when  he  conducted  his  military  expedi- 
tion against  the  murderous  Indians.  When  Franklin 
sailed  for  England  in  1757,  William  accompanied  him 
with  the  view  of  obtaining  a  license  from  the  Inns  of 
Court,  in  which  he  had  already  been  entered  by  the 
former,  to  practice  as  a  barrister.  Abroad,  he  still  re- 
mained his  father's  inseparable  companion,  living  with 
him,  accompanying  him  in  his  travelling  excursions, 
attending  him,  when  he  was  so  signally  honored  at  Cam- 
bridge and  Oxford,  even  poring  with  him  over  the  parish 
records  and  gravestones  at  Ecton  from  which  Franklin 
sought  to  rescue  such  information  as  he  could  about  his 
humble  ancestors,  who  could  not  have  excited  his  curiosity 
more  keenly,  if  they  had  all  been  Princes  of  the  Blood. 
What  the  two  learned  at  Ecton  of  the  abilities  and  public 
spirit  of  Thomas,  an  uncle  of  Franklin,  and  a  man  of  no 
little  local  prominence,  suggested  such  a  close  resemblance 
between  the  uncle  and  nephew  that  William  Franklin 
remarked:  "Had  he  died  on  the  same  day,  one  might 
have  supposed  a  transmigration."  Alexander  Carlyle 
in  his  Autobiography  has  something  to  say  about  an  oc- 
casion at  Doctor  Robertson's  house  in  Edinburgh  when 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    39 

the  pair  as  well  as  Hume,  Dr.  Cullen,  Adam  Smith  and 
others  were  present.  The  son,  Carlyle  tells  us,  "was 
open  and  communicative,  and  pleased  the  company 
better  than  his  father;  and  some  of  us  observed  indica- 
tions of  that  decided  difference  of  opinion  between  father 
and  son  which  in  the  American  War  alienated  them  alto- 
gether." The  favorable  impression  made  by  William 
Franklin  on  this  company  at  this  period  of  his  life,  he 
also  made  on  William  Strahan,  of  whom  we  shall  have 
much  more  to  say.  "Your  son,"  Strahan  wrote  to 
Franklin's  wife,  "I  really  think  one  of  the  prettiest  young 
gentlemen  I  ever  knew  from  America."  Indeed,  even  in 
extreme  old  age  the  handsome  presence,  courtly  manners 
and  quick  intelligence  of  William  Franklin  won  their  way 
at  any  social  gathering.  Speaking  of  an  occasion  on 
which  he  had  met  him,  Crabbe  Robinson  says  in  his 
Diary,  "Old  General  Franklin,  son  of  the  celebrated 
Benjamin  was  of  the  party.  He  is  eighty-four  years  of 
age,  has  a  courtier-like  mien,  and  must  have  been  a  very 
fine  man.  He  is  now  very  animated  and  interesting, 
but  does  not  at  all  answer  to  the  idea  one  would  natu- 
rally form  of  the  son  of  the  great  Franklin."1    A  few 

1  In  a  paper  on  William  Franklin,  read  before  the  New  Jersey  Historical 
Society  on  Sept.  27,  1848,  William  A.  Whitehead  sketches  him  in  this 
manner:  "He  was  of  a  cheerful,  facetious  disposition;  could  narrate  well 
entertaining  stories  to  please  his  friends;  was  engaging  in  his  manners,  and 
possessed  good  conversational  powers.  He  lived  in  the  recollection  of 
those  who  saw  him  in  New  Jersey  as  a  man  of  strong  passions,  fond  of 
convivial  pleasures,  well  versed  in  the  ways  of  the  world,  and,  at  one 
period  of  his  life  not  a  stranger  to  the  gallantries  which  so  frequently  marred 
the  character  of  the  man  of  that  age.  He  was  above  the  common  size, 
remarkably  handsome,  strong  and  athletic,  though  subject  to  gout  towards 
the  close  of  his  life."  His  writings,  Whitehead  thought,  though  perhaps 
less  remarkable  than  might  be  expected  from  his  advantages  of  education 
and  association,  gave  evidence  of  literary  attainments  which  compared 
favorably  with  those  of  most  of  the  prominent  men  of  that  day  in  the 
Colonies.  If  The  Historical  Review  of  the  Constitution  and  Government  of 
Pennsylvania  from  its  Origin  is  one  of  them,  as  has  been  supposed,  we  can 
only  say  that  it  at  least  hardly  deserves  such  praise.     The  unassimilated 


40         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

days  after  the  departure  of  Franklin  from  England  in 
August,  1762,  the  son  was  married  to  Miss  Elizabeth 
Downes,  of  St.  James  Street,  "a  very  agreeable  West 
India  lady,"  if  her  father-in-law  may  be  believed.  Before 
the  marriage  took  place,  he  had  been  appointed,  in  the 
thirty-second  year  of  his  age,  Governor  of  New  Jersey. 
If  the  appointment  was  made,  as  has  been  supposed,  to 
detach  Franklin  from  the  Colonial  cause,  it  failed,  of 
course,  to  produce  any  such  result,  but  it  did  have  the 
effect  of  completely  bringing  over  William  Franklin  to 
the  Loyalist  side,  when  the  storm  finally  broke,  and 
Franklin  pledged  his  life,  his  fortune  and  his  sacred  honor 
to  the  patriot  cause.  As  the  Revolution  drew  on,  Wil- 
liam Franklin  became  a  partisan  of  the  British  Govern- 
ment, and,  when  he  still  held  fast  to  his  own  office,  in 
spite  of  the  dismissal  of  his  father  from  his  office  as 
Deputy  Postmaster-General  for  the  Colonies,  Franklin 
wrote  to  him  bluntly:  "But  you,  who  are  a  thorough 
Courtier,  see  everything  with  Government  Eyes."  The 
son  even  disregarded  what  was  practically  a  request 
from  the  father  that  he  should  give  up  an  office,  which 
was  becoming  more  and  more  complicated  with  the  arbi- 
trary measures  of  the  English  Ministry,  and  had  been 
year  after  year  a  drain  upon  the  purse  of  the  father. 
Then  followed  his  ignominious  arrest  as  a  Tory  by  the 
New  Jersey  Assembly,  his  defiant  vaunt  "Pro  Rege  and 
Patria  was  the  motto  I  assumed,  when  I  first  commenced 
my  political  life,  and  I  am  resolved  to  retain  it  till  death 
shall  put  an  end  to  my  mortal  existence,"  his  breach 
with  his  father,  his  rancorous  activity  as  the  President  of 
the  Board  of  Associated  Loyalists,  which  drew  down  on 
him  the  suspicion  of  having  abetted  at  least  one  mur- 
derous  outrage,    and   his   subsequent   abandonment    of 

material  scattered  through  its  pages  reminds  us  of  nothing  so  much  as 
feather  pellets  and  fragments  of  bone  that  have  passed  unchanged  through 
the  gastric  tract  of  a  hawk. 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    41 

America  for  England,  where  he  died  long  after  the  war, 
a  pensioner  of  the  British  Crown.  With  the  breach 
between  father  and  son,  ended  forever  the  visits  that  the 
members  of  the  Franklin  family  in  Philadelphia  had  been 
in  the  habit  of  paying  from  time  to  time  to  the  Colonial 
Governor,  the  personal  intercourse  between  the  two, 
which,  upon  the  part  of  the  father,  we  are  told  by  William 
Strahan,  was  at  once  that  of  a  friend,  a  brother  and  an 
intimate  and  easy  companion,  and  such  filial  letters  as 
the  one,  for  example,  in  which  William  Franklin  wrote 
to  Franklin  that  he  was  extremely  obliged  to  him  for  his 
care  in  supplying  him  with  money,  and  should  ever  have 
a  grateful  sense  of  that  with  the  other  numberless  indul- 
gences that  he  had  received  from  his  parental  affection. 
After  the  restoration  of  peace  between  the  two  warring 
countries,  overtures  of  reconciliation  were  made  by 
William  Franklin.  "I  .  .  .  am  glad,"  his  father  wrote, 
"to  find  that  you  desire  to  revive  the  affectionate  Inter- 
course, that  formerly  existed  between  us.  It  will  be  very 
agreeable  to  me;  indeed  nothing  has  ever  hurt  me  so 
much  and  affected  me  with  such  keen  Sensations,  as  to 
find  myself  deserted  in  my  old  Age  by  my  only  Son;  and 
not  only  deserted,  but  to  find  him  taking  up  Arms  against 
me,  in  a  Cause,  wherein  my  good  Fame,  Fortune  and 
Life  were  all  at  Stake."  Then  with  an  uncertain  touch 
of  the  native  sense  of  justice,  which  was  so  deeply  seated 
in  his  breast,  he  continued:  "I  ought  not  to  blame  you 
for  differing  in  Sentiment  with  me  in  Public  Affairs.  We 
are  Men,  all  subject  to  Errors.  Our  Opinions  are  not  in 
our  own  Power;  they  are  form'd  and  govern'd  much  by 
Circumstances,  that  are  often  as  inexplicable  as  they  are 
irresistible.  Your  Situation  was  such  that  few  would 
have  censured  your  remaining  Neuter,  tho'  there  are 
Natural  Duties  which  precede  political  ones,  and  cannot  be 
extinguish 'd  by  them."  Responding  to  a  statement  in 
this  same  letter  that  the  writer  would  be  glad  to  see  him 


42         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

when  convenient,  but  would  not  have  him  come  to  Paris 
at  that  time,  William  Franklin  had  a  brief  interview  with 
his  father  at  Southampton,  when  the  latter  was  return- 
ing, after  the  restoration  of  peace  between  Great  Britain 
and  the  United  States,  full  of  gratified  patriotism,  as 
well  as  of  years  and  infirmities,  to  the  land  from  which 
the  son  was  an  outcast.  That  immedicable  wound,  how- 
ever, was  not  to  be  healed  by  one  or  even  by  many  inter- 
views, and,  while  Franklin  did  subsequently  devise  his 
lands  in  Nova  Scotia  to  William  Franklin  and  release 
him  from  certain  debts,  he  could  not  refrain  from  a  bitter 
fling  in  doing  so.  "The  part  he  acted  against  me  in  the 
late  war,  which  is  of  public  notoriety,"  the  will  ran,  "will 
account  for  my  leaving  him  no  more  of  an  estate  he 
endeavoured  to  deprive  me  of." 

Again  that  remorseless  moral  system,  in  comparison 
with  which  the  flimsy  moral  system  of  the  Autobiography 
is,  to  use  Bismarck's  figure,  but  a  lath  painted  to  look 
like  iron,  had  reminded  one,  who  had  had  the  temerity 
to  violate  its  ordinances,  that  what  is  now  as  luscious  as 
locusts  may  shortly  be  as  bitter  as  coloquintida. 

Surely  there  are  few  things  in  history  more  pathetic 
than  that  the  relationship,  for  which  the  father  had  set 
aside  the  world  and  the  world's  law,  and  to  which  the 
incalculable  workings  of  human  love  had  almost  commu- 
nicated the  genuineness  and  dignity  of  moral  legitimacy, 
should  have  been  the  one  thing  to  turn  to  ashes  upon  the 
lips  of  a  life  blessed  with  prosperity  and  happiness  almost 
beyond  the  measure  of  any  that  the  past  has  brought 
home  to  us!1 

1  The  judgment  of  Franklin  himself  as  to  how  far  his  life  had  been  a 
fortunate  one  was  freely  expressed  in  a  letter  to  his  friend  John  Sargent, 
dated  Jan.  27,  1783.  "Mrs.  Sargent  and  the  good  Lady,  her  Mother," 
he  said,  "are  very  kind  in  wishing  me  more  happy  Years.  I  ought  to  be 
satisfy'd  with  those  Providence  has  already  been  pleas'd  to  afford  me, 
being  now  in  my  seventy-eighth;  a  long  Life  to  pass  without  any  uncom- 
mon Misfortune,  the  greater  part  of  it  in  Health  and  Vigor  of  Mind  and 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    43 

*  It  has  been  suggested  that  Franklin  had  another  natural 
child  in  the  wife  of  John  Foxcroft.  In  a  letter  to  the 
former,  Foxcroft  acquaints  him  that  "his  daughter" 
had  been  safely  brought  to  bed,  and  had  presented  the 
writer  with  a  sweet  little  girl,  and  in  several  letters  to 
Foxcroft  Franklin  speaks  of  Mrs.  Foxcroft  as  "my 
daughter."  "God  send  my  Daughter  a  good  time,  and 
you  a  Good  Boy,"  are  the  words  of  one  of  them.  The 
suggestion  has  been  rejected  by  Albert  Henry  Smyth, 
the  accomplished  editor  of  Franklin's  writings,  on  chrono- 
logical grounds  which,  it  seems  to  us,  are  by  no  means 
conclusive.  The  term,  "daughter,"  however,  standing 
alone,  would  certainly,  under  any  circumstances,  be 
largely  deprived  of  its  significance  by  the  fact  that  Frank- 
lin, in  his  intercourse  with  other  women  than  Mrs.  Fox- 
croft, seems  in  the  course  of  his  life  to  have  been  addressed, 
in  both  English  and  French,  by  every  paternal  appella- 
tion from  Pappy  to  Tres  cher  Papa  known  to  the  language 
of  endearment.1  Moreover,  so  singularly  free  from  self- 
consciousness  was  he  in  relation  to  his  own  sexual  vagaries, 
so  urgent  were  his  affectionate  impulses,  that  it  is  hard  to 
believe  that  he  could  have  been  the  father  of  such  an 
illegitimate  daughter  when  there  is  no  evidence  to  show 
that,  aside  from  a  little  concession  to  the  jealousy  of 
Mrs.  Franklin,  he  treated  her  exactly  as  he  did  his 
acknowledged  daughter,  Sally. 


Body,  near  Fifty  Years  of  it  in  continu'd  Possession  of  the  Confidence  of 
my  Country,  in  public  Employments,  and  enjoying  the  Esteem  and 
affectionate,  friendly  Regard  of  many  wise  and  good  Men  and  Women, 
in  every  Country  where  I  have  resided.  For  these  Mercies  and  Blessings 
I  desire  to  be  thankful  to  God,  whose  Protection  I  have  hitherto  had, 
and  I  hope  for  its  Continuance  to  the  End,  which  now  cannot  be  far 
distant." 

1  For  instance,  in  a  letter  to  Elizabeth  Partridge  Franklin  signs  himself 
"Your  affectionate  Papah,"  and  in  a  letter  to  Madam  Conway,  "Your 
affectionate  Father  (as  you  do  me  the  Honor  to  call  me),"  and  in  a  letter 
to  Miss  Flainville,  "Your  loving  Papa." 


44        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

The  unsophisticated  relations  of  Franklin  to  William 
Franklin  were  also  his  relations  to  William  Temple  Frank- 
lin, who  was  born  in  England,  when  his  father  was  in 
that  country  with  Franklin  during  the  latter's  first  mis- 
sion abroad.  The  mother  of  his  father  is  unknown,  and 
so  is  his  own.  Silence  was  one  of  the  virtues  enjoined 
on  Franklin  by  his  little  book,  and  was  an  innate  attri- 
bute of  his  strong  character  besides.  The  case  was 
certainly  one,  in  which,  if  he  had  been  reproached  by  his 
father,  William  Franklin  could  have  found  an  extenuating 
example  very  near  at  hand,  even  if  not  very  readily 
available  for  the  purposes  of  recrimination.  But  there 
is  nothing  to  lead  us  to  believe  that  Franklin  was  more 
concerned  about  the  second  bar  sinister  in  his  coat  of 
arms  than  the  first.  On  the  contrary,  his  affection 
appropriated  his  little  grandson  with  a  promptitude  which 
reminds  us  of  the  story  told  in  one  of  his  letters  to  his 
wife  about  the  boy  who  asked  another  boy,  when  the 
latter  was  crying  over  a  pennyworth  of  spilt  vinegar, 
for  fear  that  his  mother  would  whip  him,  "Have  you  then 
got  ne'er  a  Grandmother?"  Almost,  if  not,  from  the 
very  beginning,  Franklin,  and  not  William,  was  Temple's 
real  father,  and,  after  William  became  estranged  from 
Franklin,  the  grandson  thenceforth  occupied  the  place 
in  the  heart  of  the  latter  which  the  son  had  previously 
occupied,  or  one,  if  anything,  even  warmer.  When 
William  was  appointed  Governor  of  New  Jersey,  and 
sailed  away  with  his  bride  to  his  province,  Temple, 
then  about  two  years  old,  was  left  in  London.  As  he 
grew  older,  he  was  placed  by  his  grandfather,  after  the 
return  of  the  grandfather  to  England  in  1764,  in  a  school 
near  London  from  which  he  often  came  to  visit  the  latter 
at  Mrs.  Stevenson's  house  at  No.  7  Craven  Street.  After 
one  of  these  visits,  Franklin  writes  to  William,  "Temple 
has  been  at  home  with  us  during  the  Christmas  Vaca- 
tion from  School.     He  improves  continually,  and  more 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    45 

and  more  engages  the  Regard  of  all  that  are  acquainted 
with  him,  by  his  pleasing,  sensible,  manly  Behaviour." 
On  another  occasion,  in  settling  an  account  with  William 
Franklin  he  says  proudly,  after  referring  to  outlays 
required  by  the  maintenance  and  education  of  Temple, 
"But  that  his  Friends  will  not  grudge  when  they  see  him." 
For  a  time,  Temple  was  an  inmate  of  the  Craven  Street 
House.  When  Franklin  returned  to  Philadelphia  in 
1775,  he  took  him  with  him,  and  turned  him  over  to 
William  Franklin,  whose  family  name  the  youth,  until 
then  known  as  William  Temple,  assumed  for  the  future. 
Temple,  however,  after  spending  some  happy  months 
in  New  Jersey,  was  soon  again  with  his  grandfather  at 
Philadelphia  for  the  purpose  of  attending  the  College  of 
Philadelphia,  and  here  he  was  when  Franklin  was  on 
the  point  of  setting  out  on  his  mission  to  France.  When 
he  did  sail,  Temple,  then  sixteen  or  seventeen  years  of 
age,  and  Benjamin  Franklin  Bache,  the  oldest  son  of 
Franklin's  daughter,  Sally,  a  boy  of  seven,  accompanied 
him;  it  being  the  purpose  of  Franklin  to  place  Temple 
at  some  foreign  university,  with  the  design  of  ultimately 
making  a  lawyer  of  him,  and  Benjamin  at  some  school 
in  Paris.1  Governor  Franklin,  who  was  a  prisoner  in 
Connecticut,  did  not  hear  of  the  departure  of  his  father 
until  several  weeks  after  the  three  had  sailed.  "If," 
he  wrote  to  his  wife,  "the  old  gentleman  has  taken  the 
boy  with  him,  I  hope  it  is  only  to  put  him  into  some 
foreign  university." 

Abroad,  the  idea  of  giving  Temple  a  legal  education 
was  first  deferred,  and  then  finally  dismissed.  His  grand- 
father, with  an  infinite  amount  to  do,  and  with  no  cleri- 
cal help  provided  by  Congress  to  assist  him  in  doing  it, 

1  In  a  letter  from  Paris  to  Jan  Ingenhousz,  dated  Apr.  26,  1777,  Franklin 
told  Ingenhousz  that  he  had  brought  Temple  with  him  from  America 
"partly  to  finish  his  Education,  having  a  great  Affection  for  him,  and 
partly  to  have  his  Assistance  as  a  Secretary." 


46         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

was  constrained  to  employ  him  as  his  private  secretary, 
without  any  aid  except  that  of  a  French  clerk,  who  was 
paid  a  salary  of  fifty  louis  per  annum.  Engaging  in 
person,  endowed  to  some  degree  with  the  vivacity  of  his 
grandfather  and  father,  speaking  French  much  better 
than  his  grandfather,  possessed  of  fair  abilities  and  at- 
tentive to  his  duties,  he  appears  to  have  filled  the  post 
of  secretary  creditably,  though  Congress,  for  one  reason 
or  another,  could  never  be  induced  to  recognize  his  ap- 
pointment officially.  Later  on,  when  John  Adams, 
John  Jay,  Henry  Laurens  and  Franklin  were  appointed 
with  Jefferson,  who  declined  to  serve,  Commissioners  to 
negotiate  peace  with  Great  Britain,  he  became  their 
Secretary  at  an  annual  salary  of  one  thousand  pounds, 
but  the  vain,  pathetic  efforts  of  the  grandfather,  both 
before  and  after  his  return  to  America  from  France, 
when  too  much  time  had  been  lost  for  Temple  to  resume 
the  thought  of  taking  up  the  study  of  law,  to  obtain  some 
secondary  diplomatic,  or  other,  position  in  the  public 
service  for  the  grandson,  make  up  one  of  the  despicable 
chapters  in  the  history  of  Congress.  Remarkable  as  it 
now  seems,  at  one  time  there  was  even  an  effort  on  foot 
in  America  to  oust  Temple  from  his  position  as  the  pri- 
vate secretary  of  Franklin.  It  called  forth  a  remonstrance 
in  a  letter  from  the  latter  to  Richard  Bache,  his  son-in- 
law,  which  is  not  only  deeply  interesting  because  of  its 
stirring,  measured  force  of  expression,  but  also  because 
of  the  tenderness  for  Temple  which  it  manifests. 


I  am  surprised  to  hear  [he  said]  that  my  grandson,  Temple 
Franklin,  being  with  me,  should  be  an  objection  against  me, 
and  that  there  is  a  cabal  for  removing  him.  Methinks  it  is 
rather  some  merit,  that  I  have  rescued  a  valuable  young  man 
from  the  danger  of  being  a  Tory,  and  fixed  him  in  honest 
republican  Whig  principles;  as  I  think,  from  the  integrity  of 
his  disposition,  his  industry,  his  early  sagacity,  and  uncommon 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    47 

abilities  for  business,  he  may  in  time  become  of  great  service 
to  his  country.  It  is  enough  that  I  have  lost  my  son;  would 
they  add  my  grandson  ?  An  old  man  of  seventy,  I  undertook 
a  winter  voyage  at  the  command  of  the  Congress,  and  for  the 
public  service,  with  no  other  attendant  to  take  care  of  me. 
I  am  continued  here  in  a  foreign  country,  where,  if  I  am  sick, 
his  filial  attention  comforts  me,  and,  if  I  die,  I  have  a  child 
to  close  my  eyes  and  take  care  of  my  remains.  His  dutiful 
behaviour  towards  me,  and  his  diligence  and  fidelity  in  busi- 
ness, are  both  pleasing  and  useful  to  me. 

The  same  indulgent  estimate  of  Templet  capacity  is 
also  indicated  in  a  letter  to  Samuel  Huntington  in  which 
Franklin  requested  Congress  to  take  his  grandson  under 
his  protection.  After  stating  that  Temple  seemed  to  be 
qualified  for  public  foreign  affairs  "by  a  sagacity  and 
judgment  above  his  years,  and  great  diligence  and 
activity,  exact  probity,  a  genteel  address,  a  facility  in 
speaking  well  the  French  tongue,  and  all  the  knowledge  of 
business  to  be  obtained  by  a  four  years'  constant  employ- 
ment in  the  secretary's  office,"  he  added:  "After  all  the 
allowance  I  am  capable  of  making  for  the  partiality 
of  a  parent  to  his  offspring,  I  cannot  but  think  he  may 
in  time  make  a  very  able  foreign  minister  for  Congress, 
in  whose  service  his  fidelity  may  be  relied  on." 

A  thing  most  earnestly  desired  by  Franklin  was  the 
marriage  of  Temple  to  a  daughter  of  Madame  Brillon, 
who  sometimes  referred  to  Temple  as  "M.  Franklinet." 
So  ardent  was  the  chase  upon  his  part  that  he  even  as- 
sured the  mother  that  he  was  ready  to  spend  the  rest  of 
his  life  in  France  if  the  only  obstacle  to  the  union  was  the 
fear  that  Temple  would  return  to  America  with  him. 
Mademoiselle  Brillon  does  not  seem  to  have  been  inclined 
to  let  Temple  despair  but  her  parents  were  unwilling  to 
give  their  consent.  Madame  Brillon  declared  that  it 
would  have  been  sweet  to  her  heart  and  most  agreeable 
to  M.  Brillon  to  have  been  able  to  form  a  union  which 


48        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

would  have  made  but  one  family  of  the  Brillons  and  the 
Franklins,  and  that  they  liked  Temple,  and  believed  that 
he  had  everything  requisite  to  make  a  man  distinguished, 
and  to  render  a  woman  happy,  but  they  must  have,  she 
said,  a  son-in-law  who  would  be  in  a  situation  to  succeed 
her  husband  in  his  office,  and  who  was  also  a  man  of  their 
religion.  This  was  in  reply  to  a  letter  from  Franklin  in 
which  he  proposed  the  match,  and  had  said  of  Temple, 
"He  is  still  young,  and  perhaps  the  partiality  of  a  father 
has  made  me  think  too  highly  of  him,  but  it  seems  to  me 
that  he  has  the  stuff  in  him  to  make  in  time  a  distinguished 
man."  After  reading  the  letters  from  Franklin  about 
his  grandson,  we  can  readily  believe  that  Lafayette  did 
not  exaggerate  when  he  wrote  to  Washington  that  Frank- 
lin loved  his  grandchild  better  than  anything  else  in  the 
world.  Even  when  Temple  was  some  twenty-four  years 
of  age,  Franklin  in  one  of  his  letters  addresses  him  as 
"My  Dear  Child"  and  signs  himself,  "Your  loving 
Grandfather."  While  the  two  remained  in  France,  the 
old  man  improved  every  opportunity  to  advance  the 
fortunes  of  the  younger  one,  matrimonial  or  otherwise. 
When  his  legs  grew  too  gouty  to  enable  him  to  keep 
pace  in  mounting  the  stairways  at  Versailles  with  the 
other  foreign  ministers,  it  was  by  Temple  that  he  was 
represented  at  Court  levees.  By  him  Temple  was  also 
introduced  to  Voltaire,  and  enjoyed  the  unusual  honor  of 
having  that  great  man  with  an  expressive  gesture  say  to 
him:  "My  child,  God  and  Liberty!  Recollect  those 
two  words."  To  Temple,  too,  was  delegated  by  our 
envoys  the  office  of  handing  to  Vergennes  the  memorial 
proposing  an  alliance  between  France,  Spain  and  the 
United  States,  and  it  was  he  who  actually  delivered  to 
Lafayette,  on  behalf  of  his  grandfather,  the  handsome 
sword  with  which  Congress  had  honored  the  former. 
When  the  olive  branch  extended  by  William  Franklin  to 
Franklin  was  accepted  by  him,  Temple  was  sent  over  by 


Franklin's  Moral  Standing  and  System    49 

him  to  William  in  England  for  a  season  as  the  best  peace- 
offering  in  the  gift  of  the  sender.  "I  send  your  Son  over 
to  pay  his  Duty  to  you,"  he  wrote  to  William.  "You 
will  find  him  much  improv'd.  He  is  greatly  esteem'd 
and  belov'd  in  this  Country,  and  will  make  his  Way 
anywhere."  A  letter  written  to  Temple,  during  his  ab- 
sence on  this  occasion,  by  his  grandfather,  in  which  his 
grandfather  pathetically  complains  of  his  silence,  is  an- 
other minor  proof  of  the  devotion  felt  by  Franklin  for 
Temple.  And  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  the 
feeling  was  fully  returned;  for  even  the  prospect  of  being 
united  to  the  daughter  of  Madame  Brillon,  with  the  full 
sanction  of  his  grandfather,  was  not  sufficient  to  reconcile 
Temple  to  the  thought  of  being  left  behind  in  France  by 
him.  So  far  from  being  heeded  by  Congress  was  the 
request  of  Franklin  that  some  public  office  be  conferred 
upon  Temple  that  the  latter  was  even  displaced  in  his 
secretaryship  by  another  person  without  a  line  of  notice 
from  Congress  to  his  grandfather.  And  when  the  two 
arrived  in  America,  after  they  had  lingered  long  enough 
at  Southampton  for  William  Franklin  to  transfer  to  his 
son  a  farm  of  some  six  hundred  acres  at  Rancocas,  in  the 
State  of  New  Jersey,  purchased  for  Temple  by  Franklin, 
Temple  fared  no  better  at  the  hands  of  the  American 
Government  than  in  France.  His  efforts,  first,  to  secure 
the  Secretaryship  of  the  Federal  Convention  of  1787, 
and,  afterwards,  to  obtain  some  appointment  under  the 
administration  of  Washington,  met  with  no  success, 
despite  all  that  his  grandfather  could  do  for  him.  For 
a  while  he  lived  on  his  Terre,  as  Franklin  called  it,  at 
Rancocas,  but,  after  the  death  of  Franklin,  who  did  not 
forget  him  in  his  will,  he  became  restless,  and  wandered 
back  to  the  Old  World,  where  he  delayed  so  long  the 
publication  of  his  grandfather's  writings,  bequeathed  to 
him  by  the  latter,  that  he  was  strongly  but  unjustly 
suspected  for  a  time  of  having  been  bribed  by  the  British 

VOL.  I — 4 


50        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Government  to  suppress  them.  His  slender  literary 
qualifications  for  giving  the  proper  perspective  to  such 
a  mass  of  material  had  simply  stood  appalled  at  the 
magnitude  of  their  task. 


CHAPTER  II 
FranKlin's  Religious  Beliefs 

CLOSELY  akin  to  Franklin's  system  of  morals  were 
his  views  about  Religion.  Scattered  through 
his  writings  are  sentences  full  of  gratitude  to  God 
for  His  favor  in  lifting  him  up  from  such  a  low  to  such 
a  high  estate,  in  bringing  him  substantially  unscathed 
through  the  graver  dangers  and  baser  temptations  of 
human  life,  and  in  affording  him  the  assurance  that  the 
divine  goodness,  of  which  he  had  received  such  signal 
proofs  in  his  career,  would  not  cease  with  his  death.  In 
the  Autobiography,  after  alluding  in  modest  terms  to  the 
poverty  and  obscurity,  in  which  he  was  born  and  bred, 
and  the  affluence  and  reputation  subsequently  won  by 
him,  he  says: 

And  now  I  speak  of  thanking  God,  I  desire  with  all  humility 
to  acknowledge  that  I  owe  the  mentioned  happiness  of  my 
past  life  to  His  kind  providence,  which  lead  me  to  the  means 
I  used  and  gave  them  success.  My  belief  of  this  induces  me 
to  hope,  though  I  must  not  presume,  that  the  same  goodness 
will  still  be  exercised  toward  me,  in  continuing  that  happiness, 
or  enabling  me  to  bear  a  fatal  reverse,  which  I  may  experience 
as  others  have  done;  the  complexion  of  my  future  fortune 
being  known  to  Him  only  in  whose  power  it  is  to  bless  to  us 
even  our  afflictions. 

These  words,  though  they  occur  in  the  work  which 
Franklin  tells  us  was  wrritten  when  he  was  not  dressed 

51 


52         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

for  a  ball,  he  well  knew  would  be  read  by  other  eyes  than 
those  of  the  son  for  whom  they  were  primarily  intended; 
but  one  of  his  familiar  letters  to  his  wife,  written  some 
years  before  the  Autobiography  was  begun,  contains  ex- 
pressions equally  devout;  associated  on  this  occasion, 
however,  with  the  aspirations  for  the  welfare  of  his  fellow 
creatures  which  constituted  the  real  religion  of  his  life. 

God  is  very  good  to  us  both  in  many  Respects  [he  wrote]. 
Let  us  enjoy  his  Favours  with  a  thankful  &  chearful  Heart; 
and,  as  we  can  make  no  direct  Return  to  him,  show  our  Sense 
of  his  Goodness  to  us,  by  continuing  to  do  Good  to  our  Fel- 
low Creatures,  without  Regarding  the  Returns  they  make  us, 
whether  Good  or  Bad.  For  they  are  all  his  Children,  tho' 
they  may  sometimes  be  our  Enemies.  The  Friendships  of 
this  World  are  changeable,  uncertain,  transitory  Things; 
but  his  Favour,  if  we  can  secure  it,  is  an  Inheritance  forever. 

With  respect  to  the  successful  issue,  to  which  a  manifest 
Providence  had,  after  so  many  vicissitudes  and  perils, 
conducted  the  American  Revolution,  he  wrote  to  Josiah 
Quincy  in  words  as  solemn  as  a  Te  Deum: 

Considering  all  our  Mistakes  and  Mismanagements,  it  is 
wonderful  we  have  finished  our  Affair  so  well,  and  so  soon. 
Indeed,  I  am  wrong  in  using  that  Expression,  "  We  have 
finished  our  Affair  so  well.  Our  Blunders  have  been  many, 
and  they  serve  to  manifest  the  Hand  of  Providence  more 
clearly  in  our  Favour;  so  that  we  may  much  more  properly 
say,  These  are  Thy  Doings,  0  Lord,  and  they  are  marvellous 
in  our  Eyes. 

Franklin  might  well  have  seen  the  hand  of  Providence 
in  the  momentous  result  for  which  he  had  dared  so  much 
and  labored  so  long,  and  which  meant  so  much  to  human 
history,  but  its  shaping  power  over  the  destiny  of  even 
such  a  Murad  the  Unlucky  as  his  hapless  nephew,  Benny 
Mecom,  is  recognized  by  him  in  a  letter  to  his  beloved 
sister,  Jane  Mecom,  and  her  husband  when  Benny  had  gone 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  53 

off  to  seek  his  fortune  as  a  printer  in  Antigua.  ' '  After  all, ' ' 
he  concludes,  "having  taken  care  to  do  what  appears  to 
be  for  the  best,  we  must  submit  to  God's  providence,  which 
orders  all  things  really  for  the  best."  On  another  occa- 
sion, in  an  ingenious  paper  on  Water  Spouts,  the  sage 
philosopher,  seeing  in  the  benign  manner  in  which  the 
waters  of  the  ocean  rid  themselves  of  salt,  in  the  process 
of  evaporation,  the  same  God  that  the  poor  Indian  sees 
in  the  clouds  or  hears  in  the  wind,  impressively  exclaims: 
"He  who  hath  proportioned  and  given  proper  Qualities 
to  all  Things,  was  not  unmindful  of  this.  Let  us  adore 
Him  with  Praise  and  Thanksgiving."  There  are  certain 
human  feelings  which  rise  in  moments  of  uncommon 
stress  or  fervor  from  the  profoundest  depths  of  our  being 
to  our  lips  and  take  on  the  form  and  rhythm  of  sonorous 
religious  utterance,  if  for  no  better  reason,  because  no 
other  language  is  lofty  or  musical  enough  to  serve  aptly 
the  purposes  of  such  supreme  occasions;  and  this  is  true 
even  of  an  individuality  so  meagrely  spiritual  as  that  of 
Franklin. 

Other  expressions  of  the  same  character  furnish  a  reli- 
gious or  quasi-religious  setting  to  Franklin's  thoughts 
upon  his  own  dissolution.  To  his  brave  and  cheerful 
spirit,  which  experienced  so  little  difficulty  in  accommo- 
dating its  normal  philosophy  to  all  the  fixed  facts  and  laws 
of  existence,  death  was  as  natural  as  life — a  thing  not  to 
be  invited  before  its  time  but  to  be  accepted  with  unmur- 
muring serenity  when  it  came.  The  only  certain  things 
in  this  world,  he  said  in  his  homespun  way,  are  death 
and  taxes. 

It  is  the  will  of  God  and  nature  [he  wrote  in  his  fifty-first 
year  to  Elizabeth  Hubbard,  after  the  death  of  his  brother 
John]  that  these  mortal  bodies  be  laid  aside,  when  the  soul 
is  to  enter  into  real  life.  This  is  rather  an  embryo  state,  a 
preparation  for  living.     A  man  is  not  completely  born  until 


54        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

he  be  dead.  Why  then  should  we  grieve,  that  a  new  child  is 
born  among  the  immortals,  a  new  member  added  to  their 
happy  society? 

We  are  spirits.  That  bodies  should  be  lent  us,  while  they 
can  afford  us  pleasure,  assist  us  in  acquiring  knowledge,  or 
in  doing  good  to  our  fellow  creatures,  is  a  kind  and  benevolent 
act  of  God.  When  they  become  unfit  for  these  purposes, 
and  afford  us  pain  instead  of  pleasure,  instead  of  an  aid  be- 
come an  incumbrance,  and  answer  none  of  the  intentions 
for  which  they  were  given,  it  is  equally  kind  and  benevolent, 
that  a  way  is  provided  by  which  we  may  get  rid  of  them. 
Death  is  that  way.  We  ourselves,  in  some  cases,  prudently 
choose  a  partial  death.  A  mangled  painful  limb,  which 
cannot  be  restored,  we  willingly  cut  off.  He  who  plucks  out 
a  tooth,  parts  with  it  freely,  since  the  pain  goes  with  it;  and 
he,  who  quits  the  whole  body,  parts  at  once  with  all  pains 
and  possibilities  of  pains  and  diseases  which  it  was  liable  to, 
or  capable  of  making  him  suffer. 

Our  friend  and  we  were  invited  abroad  on  a  party  of  pleasure, 
which  is  to  last  forever.  His  chair  was  ready  first,  and  he  is 
gone  before  us.  We  could  not  all  conveniently  start  together; 
and  why  should  you  and  I  be  grieved  at  this,  since  we  are 
soon  to  follow,  and  know  where  to  find  him?    Adieu. 

It  was  a  sane,  bright  conception  of  human  destiny 
indeed  which  could  convert  the  grim  ferryman  of  the 
Styx  into  little  more  than  an  obsequious  chairman, 
waiting  at  the  portals  of  life  until  it  suited  the  con- 
venience of  his  fare  to  issue  from  them. 

That  Being  [he  wrote  to  George  Whitefield]  who  gave  me 
Existence,  and  thro'  almost  three-score  Years  has  been  con- 
tinually showering  his  Favours  upon  me,  whose  very  Chastise- 
ments have  been  Blessings  to  me;  can  I  doubt  that  he  loves 
me?  And,  if  he  loves  me,  can  I  doubt  that  he  will  go  on  to 
take  care  of  me,  not  only  here  but  hereafter?  This  to  some 
may  seem  Presumption;  to  me  it  appears  the  best  grounded 
Hope;  Hope  of  the  Future,  built  on  Experience  of  the  Past. 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  55 

The  same  thought  is  repeated  in  a  letter  to  William 
Strahan,  followed,  however,  by  the  dig  which  he  rarely- 
failed  to  give  to  his  Tory  friend,  "Straney,"  when  he  had 
the  chance: 

God  has  been  very  good  to  you,  from  whence  I  think  you 
may  be  assured  that  he  loves  you,  and  that  he  will  take  at 
least  as  good  care  of  your  future  Happiness  as  he  has  done 
of  your  present.  What  Assurance  of  the  Future  can  be  better 
founded  than  that  which  is  built  on  Experience  of  the  Past? 
Thank  me  for  giving  you  this  Hint,  by  the  Help  of  which 
you  may  die  as  chearfully  as  you  live.  If  you  had  Christian 
Faith,  quantum  suff.,  this  might  not  be  necessary;  but  as 
matters  are  it  may  be  of  Use. 

This  hopeful  outlook  continued  until  the  end.  In  a 
letter  to  his  "dear  old  friend,"  George  Whatley,  which 
was  written  about  five  years  before  the  writer's  death, 
he  adds  a  resource  borrowed  from  his  scientific  knowledge 
to  the  other  resources  of  his  tranquil  optimism. 

You  see  [he  said]  I  have  some  reason  to  wish,  that,  in  a 
future  State,  I  may  not  only  be  as  well  as  I  was,  but  a  little 
better.  And  I  hope  it;  for  I,  too,  with  your  Poet,  trust  in 
God.  And  when  I  observe,  that  there  is  great  Frugality,  as 
well  as  Wisdom,  in  his  Works,  since  he  has  been  evidently 
sparing  both  of  Labour  and  Materials;  for  by  the  various 
wonderful  Inventions  of  Propagation,  he  has  provided  for  the 
continual  peopling  his  World  with  Plants  and  Animals,  with- 
out being  at  the  Trouble  of  repeated  new  Creations;  and  by 
the  natural  Reduction  of  compound  Substances  to  their 
original  Elements,  capable  of  being  employ'd  in  new  Composi- 
tions, he  has  prevented  the  Necessity  of  creating  new  Matter; 
so  that  the  Earth,  Water,  Air,  and  perhaps  Fire,  which  being 
compounded  form  Wood,  do,  when  the  Wood  is  dissolved, 
return,  and  again  become  Air,  Earth,  Fire,  and  Water;  I  say 
that,  when  I  see  nothing  annihilated,  and  not  even  a  Drop 
of  Water  wasted,  I  cannot  suspect  the  Annihilation  of  Souls, 
or  believe,  that  he  will  suffer  the  daily  Waste  of  Millions  of 


56         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Minds  ready  made  that  now  exist,  and  put  himself  to  the 
continual  Trouble  of  making  new  ones.  Thus  finding  myself 
to  exist  in  the  World,  I  believe  I  shall,  in  some  Shape  or  other, 
always  exist. 

In  a  letter  to  M.  Montaudouin  in  1779,  in  reply  to 
one  from  that  friend  applying  to  him  the  prayer  of 
Horace  for  Augustus,  he  remarked:  "Tho'  the  Form  is 
heathen,  there  is  good  Christian  Spirit  in  it,  and  I  feel 
myself  very  well  disposed  to  be  content  with  this  World, 
which  I  have  found  hitherto  a  tolerable  good  one,  &  to 
wait  for  Heaven  (which  will  not  be  the  worse  for  keeping) 
as  long  as  God  pleases."  But  later  on,  when  seven  more 
years  of  waning  strength  had  passed,  he  wrote  to  his 
friend  Jonathan  Shipley,  the  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph's: 

I  still  have  Enjoyment  in  the  Company  of  my  Friends; 
and,  being  easy  in  my  Circumstances,  have  many  Reasons 
to  like  living.  But  the  Course  of  Nature  must  soon  put  a 
period  to  my  present  Mode  of  Existence.  This  I  shall  sub- 
mit to  with  less  Regret,  as,  having  seen  during  a  long  Life  a 
good  deal  of  this  World,  I  feel  a  growing  Curiosity  to  be  ac- 
quainted with  some  other;  and  can  chearfully,  with  filial 
Confidence,  resign  my  Spirit  to  the  conduct  of  that  great  and 
good  Parent  of  Mankind,  who  created  it,  and  who  has  so 
graciously  protected  and  prospered  me  from  my  Birth  to  the 
present  Hour. 

At  times,  his  unfailing  humor  or  graceful  fancy  even 
plays  lambently  over  the  same  stern  prospect.  In  a 
letter  to  Mrs.  Hewson,  written  four  years  before  his 
death,  he  mentions  cards  among  his  amusements,  and 
then  adds: 

I  have  indeed  now  and  then  a  little  compunction  in  reflect- 
ing that  I  spend  time  so  idly;  but  another  reflection  comes  to 
relieve  me,  whispering,  V  You  know  that  the  soul  is  immortal; 
why  then  should  you  be  such  a  niggard  of  a  little  time,  when  you 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  57 

have  a  whole  eternity  before  you?"  So,  being  easily  convinced, 
and,  like  other  reasonable  creatures,  satisfied  with  a  small 
reason,  when  it  is  in  favour  of  doing  what  I  have  a  mind  to 
do,  I  shuffle  the  cards  again  and  begin  another  game. 

We  were  long  fellow  labourers  in  the  best  of  all  works, 
the  work  of  Peace,"  he  wrote  to  David  Hartley,  when  the 
writer  was  on  the  point  of  returning  to  America  from 
France.  "  I  leave  you  still  in  the  field,  but  having  finished 
my  day's  task,  I  am  going  home  to  go  to  bed!  Wish  me  a 
good  night's  rest,  as  I  do  you  a  pleasant  evening."  This 
was  but  another  way  of  expressing  the  thought  of  an 
earlier  letter  of  his  to  George  Whatley,  "I  look  upon 
Death  to  be  as  necessary  to  our  Constitution  as  Sleep. 
We  shall  rise  refreshed  in  the  Morning." 

Your  letter  [he  said  to  another  friend,  Thomas  Jordan] 
reminds  me  of  many  happy  days  we  have  passed  together, 
and  the  dear  friends  with  whom  we  passed  them;  some  of 
whom,  alas!  have  left  us,  and  we  must  regret  their  loss,  al- 
though our  Hawkesworth  (the  compiler  of  the  South  Sea 
discoveries  of  Capt.  Cook)  is  become  an  Adventurer  in  more 
happy  regions;  and  our  Stanley  (the  eminent  musician  and 
composer)  gone,  "where  only  his  own  harmony  can  be 
exceeded." 

Many  of  these  letters,  so  full  of  peace  and  unflinching 
courage,  it  should  be  recollected,  were  written  during 
hours  of  physical  debility  or  grievous  pain. 

Every  sheet  of  water  takes  the  hue  of  the  sky  above  it, 
and  intermixed  with  these  observations  of  Franklin, 
which  were  themselves,  to  say  the  least,  fully  as  much 
the  natural  fruit  of  a  remarkably  equable  and  sanguine 
temperament  as  of  religious  confidence,  are  other  obser- 
vations of  his  upon  religious  subjects  which  were  deeply 
colored  by  his  practical  genius,  tolerant  disposition  and 
shrewd  insight  into  the  imperfections  of  human  institu- 
tions and  the  shortcomings  of  human  character.     With 


J 


58         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

the  purely  theological  and  sectarian  side  of  Religion  he 
had  no  sympathy  whatever.  It  was  a  source  of  regret 
to  him  that,  at  a  time  in  his  boyhood,  when  he  was  con- 
suming books  as  insatiably  as  the  human  lungs  consume 
oxygen,  he  should  have  read  most  of  the  treatises  "in 
polemic  divinity/ '  of  which  his  father's  little  library 
chiefly  consisted.  In  a  letter  to  Strahan,  when  he  was 
in  his  thirty-ninth  year,  he  said  that  he  had  long  wanted 
a  judicious  friend  in  London  to  send  him  from  time  to 
time  such  new  pamphlets  as  were  worth  reading  on  any 
subject,  "religious  controversy  excepted/ '  To  Richard 
Price  he  imparted  his  belief  that  religious  tests  were  in- 
vented not  so  much  to  secure  Religion  itself  as  its  emolu- 
ments, and  that,  if  Christian  preachers  had  continued 
to  teach  as  Christ  and  His  Apostles  did,  without  salaries, 
and  as  the  Quakers  did  even  in  his  day,  such  tests  would 
never  have  existed.  "When  a  Religion  is  good,"  he 
asserted,  "I  conceive  that  it  will  support  itself;  and, 
when  it  cannot  support  itself,  and  God  does  not  take 
care  to  support,  so  that  its  Professors  are  oblig'd  to  call 
for  the  help  of  the  Civil  Power,  it  is  a  sign,  I  apprehend, 
of  its  being  a  bad  one."  A  favorite  saying  of  his  was 
the  saying  of  Richard  Steele  that  the  difference  between  the 
Church  of  Rome  and  the  Church  of  England  is  that  the 
one  pretends  to  be  infallible  and  the  other  to  be  never 
in  the  wrong.  "  Orthodoxy  is  my  doxy  and  Heterodoxy 
your  doxy,"  is  a  saying  which  has  been  attributed  to 
him  as  his  own.  His  heart  went  out  at  once  to  the  Dun- 
kers,  when  Michael  Welfare,  one  of  the  founders  of  that 
sect,  gave,  as  his  reason  for  its  unwillingness  to  publish 
the  articles  of  its  belief,  the  fact  that  it  was  not  satisfied 
that  this  belief  would  not  undergo  some  future  changes 
for  the  better  with  further  light  from  Heaven. 

This  modesty  in  a  sect  [he  remarks  in  the  Autobiography] 
is  perhaps  a  singular  instance  in  the  history  of  mankind,  every 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  59 

other  sect  supposing  itself  in  possession  of  all  truth,  and  that 
those  who  differ  are  so  far  in  the  wrong;  like  a  man  traveling 
in  foggy  weather,  those  at  some  distance  before  him  on  the 
road  he  sees  wrapped  up  in  the  fog,  as  well  as  those  behind  him, 
and  also  the  people  in  the  fields  on  each  side,  but  near  him 
all  appears  clear,  tho'  in  truth  he  is  as  much  in  the  fog  as  any 
of  them. 


The  great  meeting-house  built  at  Philadelphia,  when 
George  Whitefield  had  worked  its  people  into  a  state  of 
religious  ecstasy  by  his  evangelistic  appeals,  and  the 
circumstances,  under  which  Franklin  was  elected  to  fill 
a  vacancy  among  the  Trustees,  appointed  to  hold  this 
building,  were  two  things  of  which  he  speaks  with  obvious 
pleasure  in  the  Autobiography.  The  design  in  erecting 
the  edifice,  he  declares,  was  not  to  accommodate  any 
particular  sect  but  the  inhabitants  of  Philadelphia  in 
general,  "so  that  even  if  the  Mufti  of  Constantinople 
wTere  to  send  a  missionary  to  preach  Mohammedanism  to 
us,  he  would  find  a  pulpit  at  his  service. "  The  Trustees 
to  hold  this  building  were  each  the  member  of  some 
Protestant  sect.  In  process  of  time,  the  Moravian  died, 
and  then  there  was  opposition  to  the  election  of  any  other 
Moravian  as  his  successor.  "The  difficulty  then  was," 
Franklin  tells  us,  "how  to  avoid  having  two  of  some  other 
sect,  by  means  of  the  new  choice. 

"Several  persons  were  named,  and  for  that  reason  not 
agreed  to.     At  length  one  mention'd  me,  with  the  obser-  f 
vation  that  I  was  merely  an  honest  man,  and  of  no  sect 
at  all,  which  prevail' d  with  them  to  chuse  me." 

The  manner  in  which  Franklin  came  to  occupy  this 
position  of  sectarian  detachment  is  also  set  forth  in  the 
Autobiography.  On  his  father's  side,  he  was  descended 
from  sturdy  pietists,  to  whom  the  difference  between 
one  sect  and  another  did  not  mean  merely  polemical 
warmth,  as  in  Franklin's  time,  but  the  heat  of  the  stake. 


60        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

In  the  reign  of  Bloody  Mary,  Franklin's  great-great- 
grandfather kept  his  English  Bible  open  and  suspended 
by  tapes,  under  the  concealing  cover  of  a  joint-stool,  and, 
when  he  inverted  the  stool  to  read  from  the  pages  of  the 
book  to  his  family,  one  of  his  children  stood  at  the  door 
to  give  timely  warning  of  the  approach  of  the  dreaded 
apparitor.  In  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second,  the  reli- 
gious scruples  of  Franklin's  father  and  his  Uncle  Benja- 
min, before  they  crossed  the  sea  to  Boston,  had  been 
strong  enough  to  induce  them  to  desert  the  soft  lap  of 
the  Church  of  England  for  the  harried  conventicles  of 
the  despised  and  persecuted  Non-Conformists.  To  the 
earlier  Franklins  Religion  meant  either  all  or  much  that 
it  meant  to  men  in  the  ages  when  not  Calculating  Skill, 
but,  as  Emerson  tells  us,  Love  and  Terror  laid  the  tiles 
of  cathedrals.  But  Benjamin  Franklin  was  not  a  scion 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  nor  even  of  the  seventeenth, 
but  of  the  searching  and  skeptical  eighteenth.  Some  of 
the  dogmas  of  the  creed,  in  which  he  was  religiously  edu- 
cated by  his  father,  such  as  the  eternal  decrees  of  God, 
election,  reprobation  and  the  like  appeared  to  him  unin- 
telligible, others  doubtful,  he  declares  in  the  Autobio- 
graphy. The  consequence  was  that  he  early  absented 
himself  from  the  public  assemblies  of  the  Presbyterian 
sect  in  Philadelphia,  Sunday  being  his  "studying  day," 
though  he  never  was,  he  says,  without  some  religious 
principles. 

I  never  doubted,  for  instance,  the  existence  of  the  Deity; 
that  he  made  the  world,  and  govern'd  it  by  his  Providence; 
that  the  most  acceptable  service  of  God  was  the  doing  good  to 
man;  that  our  souls  are  immortal;  and  that  all  crime  .will  be 
punished,  and  virtue  rewarded,  either  here  or  hereafter. 
These  I  esteem'd  the  essentials  of  every  religion;  and,  being 
to  be  found  in  all  the  religions  we  had  in  our  country,  I  re- 
spected them  all,  tho'  with  different  degrees  of  respect,  as  I 
found  them  more  or  less  mix'd  with  other  articles,  which, 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  61 

without  any  "tendency  to  inspire,  promote,  or  confirm  morality, 
serv'd  principally  to  divide  us,  and  make  us  unfriendly  to 
one  another. 

And  then  he  goes  on  to  inform  us  that,  as  Pennsylvania 
increased  in  people,  and  new  places  of  worship  were  con- 
tinually wanted,  and  were  generally  erected  by  voluntary 
contributions,  his  mite  for  such  purposes,  whatever  might 
be  the  sect,  was  never  refused.  This  impartial  attitude 
towards  the  different  religious  sects  he  maintained  in 
every  particular  throughout  his  life,  and  from  his  point 
of  view  he  had  no  reason  to  be  dissatisfied  with  the  result, 
if  we  may  believe  John  Adams,  who  tells  us:  "The  Catho- 
lics thought  him  almost  a  Catholic.  The  Church  of 
England  claimed  him  as  one  of  them.  The  Presbyterians 
thought  him  half  a  Presbyterian,  and  the  Friends  believed 
him  a  wet  Quaker."  "  Mr.  Franklin  had  no—  "  was  as  far 
as  Adams  himself  got  in  stating  his  own  personal  opinion 
about  Franklin's  religious  views.  To  have  been  regarded 
as  an  adherent  of  every  sect  was  a  compliment  that 
Franklin  would  have  esteemed  as  second  only  to  the 
declaration  that  he  was  merely  an  honest  man  and  of  no 
sect  at  all.  It  is  certainly  one  of  the  most  amusing  facts 
narrated  in  the  Autobiography  that  such  a  man,  only  a 
few  years  after  religious  bigotry  had  compelled  him  to  fly 
from  New  England,  the  land  for  which  Poor  Richard,  on 
one  occasion,  safely  predicted  a  year  of  "dry  Fish  and 
dry  Doctrine,"  should  have  been  invited  by  Keimer,  the 
knavish  eccentric  of  the  Autobiography,  to  become  "his 
colleague  in  a  project  he  had  of  setting  up  a  new  sect." 

George  Whitefield  appears  to  have  come  nearer  than 
anyone  else  to  the  honor  of  reducing  Franklin  to  a  defi- 
nite religious  status.  For  this  celebrated  man  he  seems 
to  have  felt  an  even  warmer  regard  than  that  which  he 
usually  entertained  for  every  clergyman  who  was  a  faith- 
ful  exponent   of  sound   morals.     He  begins  one  of  his 


62         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

letters  to  his  brother,  John  Franklin,  with  a  reference  to 
Whitefield,  and  then  he  laconically  adds:  "He  is  a  good 
Man  and  I  love  him."  In  the  Autobiography  he  certifies 
that,  in  his  opinion,  Whitefield  was  in  all  his  conduct  "a 
perfectly  honest  man."  But  even  Whitefield's  call  to 
the  unconverted,  which  awakened  the  conscience  of 
Philadelphia  to  such  a  degree  "that  one  could  not  walk 
thro*  the  town  in  an  evening  without  hearing  psalms 
sung  in  different  families  of  every  street,"  failed  to  bring 
Franklin  within  the  great  preacher's  fold.  "He  us'd, 
indeed,  sometimes  to  pray  for  my  conversion,  but  never 
had  the  satisfaction  of  believing  that  his  prayers  were 
heard.  Ours  was  a  mere  civil  friendship,  sincere  on  both 
sides,  and  lasted  to  his  death."  These  are  the  statements 
of  the  Autobiography.  And  a  mere  civil  friendship  Frank- 
lin was  inflexibly  determined  to  keep  it ;  for  we  learn  from 
the  same  source  that,  when  Whitefield  answered  an  invita- 
tion to  Franklin's  house  by  saying  that,  if  Franklin  made 
that  kind  offer  for  Christ's  sake,  he  would  not  miss  of  a 
reward,  the  reply  promptly  came  back:  "Don't  let  me  be 
mistaken;  it  was  not  for  Christ's  sake,  but  for  your  sake.11 
"One  of  our  common  acquaintance,"  says  Franklin, 
"jocosely  remark'd,  that,  knowing  it  to  be  the  custom  of 
the  saints,  when  they  received  any  favour,  to  shift  the 
burden  of  the  obligation  from  off  their  own  shoulders, 
and  place  it  in  heaven,  I  had  contriv'd  to  fix  it  on  earth." 
It  may  truly  be  said,  however,  that  nothing  is  recorded 
of  the  persuasive  eloquence  of  Whitefield  more  amazing 
than  the  fact  that  it  once  swept  Franklin  for  a  moment 
off  the  feet  on  which  he  stood  so  firmly.  He  had  made  up 
his  mind  not  to  contribute  to  one  of  Whitefield's  charitable 
projects  which  did  not  meet  with  his  approval — but  let 
iEsop  tell  the  story  in  his  own  characteristic  way: 

I  happened  soon  after  to  attend  one  of  his  sermons,  in  the 
course  of  which  I  perceived  he  intended  to  finish  with  a  col- 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  63 

lection,  and  I  silently  resolved  he  should  get  nothing  from  me. 
I  had  in  my  pocket  a  handful  of  copper  money,  three  or  four 
silver  dollars,  and  five  pistoles  in  gold.  As  he  proceeded  I 
began  to  soften,  and  concluded  to  give  the  coppers.  Another 
stroke  of  his  oratory  made  me  asham'd  of  that,  and  deter- 
min'd  me  to  give  the  silver;  and  he  finish'd  so  admirably, 
that  I  empty'd  my  pocket  wholly  into  the  collector's  dish, 
gold  and  all. 


But  Franklin  was  not  long  in  recovering  his  equipoise 
and  in  again  wondering  why  Whitefield's  auditors  should 
so  admire  and  respect  him  notwithstanding  "his  common 
abuse  of  them,  by  assuring  them  they  were  naturally 
half  beasts  and  half  devils."  Whitefield,  he  thought, 
made  a  great  mistake  in  publishing  his  sermons;  for 
litera  scripta  manet  and  affords  a  full  opportunity  for 
criticism  and  censure.  If  the  sermons  had  not  been 
published,  Whitefield's  proselytes  would  have  been  left, 
Franklin  believed,  to  feign  for  him  as  great  a  variety  of 
excellences  as  their  enthusiastic  admiration  might  wish 
him  to  have- possessed.  A  Deist,  if  anything,  Franklin 
was  when  Whitefield  first  came  to  Philadelphia,  and  a 
Deist,  if  anything,  he  was  when  Whitefield  left  it  for  the 
last  time.  When  the  latter  wrote  in  his  Journal,  "  M.  B. 
was  a  deist,  I  had  almost  said  an  atheist"  Franklin,  indis- 
posed to  be  deprived  of  all  religious  standing,  dryly 
commented:  "That  is  chalk,  I  had  almost  said  charcoal." 
A  man,  he  tells  us  in  the  Autobiography,  is  sometimes  more 
generous  when  he  has  but  a  little  money  than  when  he 
has  plenty,  perhaps  through  fear  of  being  thought  to 
have  but  little,  and  it  is  possible  that  religious  faith  may 
sometimes  be  influenced  by  the  same  kind  of  sensitiveness. 
The  truth  of  the  matter  was  that  as  respects  theological 
tenets  and  sectarian  distinctions  Franklin  was  an  incurable 
heretic,  if  such  a  term  is  appropriate  to  the  listless  indiffer- 
ence to  all  dogmas  and  sects  rarely  broken  except  by  some 


64        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

merry  jest  or  gentle  parable,  like  his  Parable  against 
Persecution  or  his  Parable  of  Brotherly  Love,  with  which 
he  regarded  every  sour  fermentation  of  the  odium  theo- 
logicum.  When  he  heard  that  a  New  Englander,  John 
Thayer,  had  become  a  Catholic,  the  worst  that  he  could 
find  it  in  his  heart  to  say  was:  "Our  ancestors  from  Catho- 
lic became  first  Church-of-England  men,  and  then 
refined  into  Presbyterians.  To  change  now  from  Presby- 
terianism  to  Popery  seems  to  me  refining  backwards, 
from  white  sugar  to  brown. ' '  In  commenting  in  a  letter  to 
Elizabeth  Partridge,  formerly  Hubbard,  a  year  or  so 
before  his  own  death  on  the  death  of  a  friend  of  theirs, 
he  uses  these  words: 

You  tell  me  our  poor  Friend  Ben  Kent  is  gone;  T  hope  to 
the  Regions  of  the  Blessed,  or  at  least  to  some  Place  where 
Souls  are  prepared  for  those  Regions.  I  found  my  Hope  on 
this,  that  tho'  not  so  orthodox  as  you  and  I,  he  was  an  honest 
Man,  and  had  his  Virtues.  If  he  had  any  Hypocrisy  it  was 
of  that  inverted  kind,  with  which  a  Man  is  not  so  bad  as  he 
seems  to  be.  And  with  regard  to  future  Bliss.  I  cannot  help 
imagining,  that  Multitudes  of  the  zealously  Orthodox  of  differ- 
ent Sects,  who  at  the  last  Day  may  flock  together,  in  hopes 
of  seeing  (mutilated)  damn'd,  will  be  disappointed,  and 
oblig'd  to  rest  content  with  their  own  Salvation. 

Franklin's  Kingdom  of  Heaven  was  one  into  which 
there  was  such  an  abundant  entrance  that  even  his  poor 
friend,  Ben  Kent,  could  hope  to  arrive  there  thoroughly 
disinfected  after  a  brief  quarantine  on  the  road.1  But 
it  is  in  his  Conte  that  the  spirit  of  religious  charity,  by 

1  Kent  was  evidently  something  of  a  character.  In  a  letter  to  his  friend 
Mrs.  Catherine  Greene,  in  1764,  Franklin  said:  "Mr.  Kent's  compliment 
is  a  very  extraordinary  one,  as  he  was  obliged  to  kill  himself  and  two  others 
in  order  to  make  it;  but,  being  killed  in  imagination  only,  they  and  he  are 
all  yet  alive  and  well,  thanks  to  God,  and  I  hope  will  continue  so  as  long 
as,  dear  Katy,  your  affectionate  friend, 

B.  Franklin." 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  65 

which  this  letter  is  animated,  is  given  the  sparkling, 
graceful  form  with  which  his  fancy  readily  clothed  its 
creations  when  form  and  finish  were  what  the  workman- 
ship of  the  occasion  required.  Montresor  who  is  very 
sick,  tells  his  cure  that  he  has  had  a  vision  during  the 
night  which  has  set  his  mind  entirely  at  rest  as  to  his 
future.  "What  was  your  vision?"  said  the  good  priest. 
"I  was,"  replied  Montresor,  "at  the  gate  of  Paradise, 
with  a  crowd  of  people  who  wished  to  enter.  And  St. 
Peter  asked  each  one  what  his  religion  was.  One  an- 
swered, 'I  am  a  Roman  Catholic. '  'Ah,  well,'  said  St. 
Peter,  'enter,  and  take  your  place  there  among  the 
Catholics.'  Another  said,  that  he  belonged  to  the 
Anglican  Church.  'Ah,  well/  said  St.  Peter,  'enter  and 
take  your  place  there  among  the  Anglicans.'  Another 
said  that  he  was  a  Quaker.  'Enter,'  said  St.  Peter,  'and 
take  your  place  among  the  Quakers.'  Finally,  my  turn 
being  come,  he  asked  me  what  my  religion  was.  'Alas!' 
replied  I,  'unfortunately  poor  Jacques  Montresor  has 
none.'  '  That  is  a  pity,'  said  the  Saint,  '  I  do  not  know 
where  to  place  you;  but  enter  all  the  same;  and  place 
yourself  where  you  can.'  " 

Perhaps,  however,  in  none  of  Franklin's  writings  is 
his  mental  attitude  towards  religious  sects  and  their 
varied  creeds  and  organizations  disclosed  with  such 
bland  insouciance  and  delicate  raillery  as  in  his  letter  to 
Mason  Weems  and  Edward  Gantt.  Weems  was  the 
famous  parson  Weems  whose  legendary  story  of  the  cherry 
tree  and  the  hatchet  made  for  many  years  such  a  sublime 
enfant  terrible  of  Washington,  and  Gantt  was  a  native  of 
Maryland  who  was  destined  in  the  course  of  time  to  be- 
come a  chaplain  of  the  United  States  Senate.  In  this 
letter,  after  acknowledging  a  letter  from  Weems  and 
Gantt  telling  him  that  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
would  not  permit  them  to  be  ordained,  unless  they  took 
the  oath  of  allegiance,  he  says  that  he  had  obtained  an 

VOL.  I~5 


66        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

opinion  from  a  clergyman  of  his  acquaintance  in  Paris 
that  they  could  not  be  ordained  there,  or  that,  if  they  were, 
they  would  be  required  to  vow  obedience  to  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Paris.  He  next  inquired  of  the  Pope's  Nuncio 
whether  they  might  not  be  ordained  by  the  Catholic 
Bishop  in  America,  but  received  the  answer  that  the 
thing  was  impossible  unless  the  gentlemen  became  Catho- 
lics. Then,  after  a  deprecatory  statement  that  the 
affair  was  one  of  which  he  knew  very  little,  and  that  he 
might  therefore  ask  questions  or  propose  means  that 
were  improper  or  impracticable,  he  pointedly  adds: 
"But  what  is  the  necessity  of  your  being  connected  with 
the  Church  of  England?  Would  it  not  be  as  well,  if  you 
were  of  the  Church  of  Ireland?"  The  religion  was  the 
same,  though  there  was  a  different  set  of  Bishops  and 
Archbishops  and  perhaps  the  Bishop  of  Deny,  who  was 
a  man  of  liberal  sentiments,  might  give  them  orders  as 
of  the  Irish  Church.  If  both  Britain  and  Ireland  refused 
them  (and  he  was  not  sure  that  the  Bishops  of  Denmark 
or  Sweden  would  ordain  them  unless  they  became  Luther- 
ans) ,  then,  in  his  humble  opinion,  next  to  becoming  Pres- 
byterians, the  Episcopal  Clergy  of  America  could  not 
do  better  than  follow  the  example  of  the  first  Clergy  of 
Scotland,  who,  when  a  similar  difficulty  arose,  assembled 
in  the  Cathedral,  and  the  Mitre,  Crosier  and  Robes  of  a 
Bishop  being  laid  upon  the  Altar,  after  earnest  prayers 
for  direction  in  their  choice,  elected  one  of  their  own 
number;  when  the  King  said  to  him:  "Arise,  go  to  the 
Altar,  and  receive  your  Office  at  the  Hand  of  God."  If  the 
British  Isles  were  sunk  in  the  sea,  he  continued  (and  the 
surface  of  the  Globe  had  suffered  greater  changes),  his 
correspondents  would  probably  take  some  such  method 
as  this,  and  persistence  in  the  denial  of  ordination  to 
them  by  the  English  Church  came  to  the  same  thing. 
A  hundred  years  later,  when  people  were  more  enlightened, 
it  would  be  wondered  at  that  men  in  America,  qualified 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  67 

by  their  learning  and  piety  to  pray  for,  and  instruct,  their 
neighbors,  should  not  be  permitted  to  do  it  until  they 
had  made  a  voyage  of  six  thousand  miles  out  and  home  to 
ask  leave  of  a  cross  old  gentleman  at  Canterbury  who 
seemed,  by  the  account  of  his  correspondents,  to  have 
as  little  regard  for  the  souls  of  the  People  of  Maryland 
as  King  William's  Attorney-General  Seymour  had  for 
those  of  the  People  of  Virginia,  when,  in  reply  to  the 
reminder  of  the  Reverend  Commissary  Blair  of  William 
and  Mary  College  that  the  latter  had  souls  to  be  saved 
as  well  as  the  People  of  England,  he  exclaimed:  "Souls! 
damn  your  Souls.     Make  Tobacco." 

Here  we  have  Franklin  absolutely  in  puris  naturalibus 
as  respects  the  sacerdotal  side  of  Religion,  lavishing  upon 
his  correspondents  in  a  single  letter  a  series  of  half-serious, 
half-mocking  sentiments  flavored  with  some  of  his  best 
intellectual  qualities,  and  doubtless  leaving  them  in  a 
teasing  state  of  uncertainty  as  to  whether  he  intended  to 
ridicule  them  or  not.  In  the  light  of  such  a  letter  as  this, 
the  reader  will  hardly  be  surprised  to  learn  that  he  did 
not  quit  the  world  until  he  had  put  on  record  his  high 
opinion  of  heretics.  After  asking  Benjamin  Vaughan  in 
one  of  his  letters  about  a  year  and  a  half  before  his  death, 
to  remember  him  affectionately  to  the  "honest"  heretic, 
Doctor  Priestley,  he  said : 

I  do  not  call  him  honest  by  way  of  distinction;  for  I  think  all 
the  heretics  I  have  known  have  been  virtuous  men.  They 
have  the  virtue  of  fortitude,  or  they  would  not  venture  to 
own  their  heresy;  and  they  cannot  afford  to  be  deficient  in 
any  of  the  other  virtues,  as  that  would  give  advantage  to 
their  many  enemies ;  and  they  have  not,  like  orthodox  sinners, 
such  a  number  of  friends  to  excuse  or  justify  them. 

Holding  these  views  about  heretics,  it  is  natural  that 
Franklin  should  at  times  have  stigmatized  religious  big- 
otry as  it  deserved.     In  his  Remarks  on  a  Late  Protest, 


68        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

when  he  was  being  assailed  for  one  of  the  most  creditable 
acts  of  his  life,  his  unsparing  denunciation  of  the  murder 
of  hapless  Indians  by  the  Paxton  Boys,  he  had  a  fearless 
word  to  say  about  "  those  religious  Bigots,  who  are  of  all 
Savages  the  most  brutish.,,  And  it  would  be  difficult 
to  find  a  terser  or  more  graphic  picture  of  religious  discord 
than  this  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Jane  Mecom: 

Each  party  abuses  the  other;  the  profane  and  the  infidel 
believe  both  sides,  and  enjoy  the  fray;  the  reputation  of  reli- 
gion in  general  suffers,  and  its  enemies  are  ready  to  say,  not 
what  was  said  in  the  primitive  times,  Behold  how  these 
Christians  love  one  another, — but,  Mark  how  these  Christians 
hate  one  another!  Indeed,  when  religious  people  quarrel 
about  religion  or  hungry  people  about  their  victuals,  it  looks 
as  if  they  had  not  much  of  either  among  them. 

Not  only  did  Franklin  have  no  sympathy  with  sects 
and  their  jarring  pretensions  but  he  had  little  patience 
with  either  doctrinal  theology  or  ecclesiastical  rites  and 
forms  of  any  sort.  Even  after  he  decided  to  keep  away 
from  public  worship  on  Sundays,  he  still  retained  [he 
said],  a  sense  of  its  utility,  when  rightly  conducted,  and 
continued  to  pay  regularly  his  annual  subscription  to  the 
Presbyterian  Church  in  Philadelphia  which  he  had  at- 
tended. Later,  he  was  induced  by  its  pastor  to  sit  now 
and  then  under  his  ministrations;  once  he  states,  as  if 
with  a  slight  elevation  of  the  eyebrows,  for  five  Sundays 
successively,  but  it  all  proved  unedifying,  since  not  a 
single  moral  principle  was  inculcated  or  enforced;  the 
aim  of  the  preacher  seeming  to  be  rather  to  make  them 
good  Presbyterians  than  good  citizens.  At  length  the 
devout  man  took  for  his  text  the  following  verse  from  the 
fourth  chapter  of  the  Philippians:  " Finally,  brethren, 
whatsoever  things  are  true,  honest,  just,  pure,  lovely  or 
of  good  report,  if  there  be  any  virtue,  or  any  praise,  think 
on  these  things."     Now,  thought  Franklin,  in  a  sermon 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  69 

on  such  a  text  we  cannot  miss  of  having  some  of  the 
"morality"  which  was  to  him  the  entire  meat  of  religion. 
But  the  text,  promising  as  it  was,  had  been  subjected  to 
such  merciless  dessication  that  it  resolved  itself  into  five 
points  only  "as  meant  by  the  apostle,  viz.:  1.  Keeping 
holy  the  Sabbath  day.  2.  Being  diligent  in  reading  the 
holy  Scriptures.  3.  Attending  duly  the  publick  worship. 
4.  Partaking  of  the  Sacrament.  5.  Paying  a  due  respect 
to  God's  ministers."  Franklin  was  disgusted,  gave  this 
preacher  up  entirely,  and  returned  to  the  use  of  the 
Articles  of  Belief  and  Acts  of  Religion  which  he  had  pre- 
viously composed  for  his  own  private  devotions.  Sub- 
sequently, however,  he  was  again  enticed  to  church  by 
the  arrival  in  Philadelphia  from  Ireland  of  a  young  Pres- 
byterian minister,  named  Hemphill,  who  preached  good 
works  rather  than  dogma  in  excellent  discourses,  apparent- 
ly extemporaneous,  and  set  off  with  an  attractive  voice. 
This  minister  was  soon  formally  arraigned  for  heterodoxy 
by  the  old  orthodox  clergy  who  were  in  the  habit  of  pay- 
ing more  attention  to  Presbyterian  doctrine  than  Frank- 
lin was,  and  found  a  powerful  champion  in  Franklin, 
who,  seeing  that  Hemphill,  while  an  "elegant  preacher," 
was,  for  reasons  that  afterwards  became  only  too  patent, 
a  poor  writer,  wrote  several  pamphlets  and  an  article  in 
the  Pennsylvania  Gazette  in  his  behalf.  Unfortunately, 
when  the  war  of  words  was  at  its  height,  Hemphill,  who 
afterwards  confessed  to  Franklin  that  none  of  the  ser- 
mons that  he  preached  were  of  his  own  composition,  was 
proved  to  have  purloined  a  part,  at  any  rate,  of  one  of  his 
sermons  from  Dr.  Foster,  of  whom  Pope  had  written, 

"Let  modest  Foster,  if  he  will  excel 
Ten  metropolitans  in  preaching  well." 

The  Synod  found  against  him,  but  so  agreeable  to 
Franklin  was  the  all  too-brief  taste  that  he  had  enjoyed 


70        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

of  good  works  that  he  adhered  to  Hemphill  to  the  last. 
"I  stuck  by  him,  however/ '  he  says,  "as  I  rather  ap- 
prov'd  his  giving  us  good  sermons  compos'd  by  others, 
than  bad  ones  of  his  own  manufacture,  tho*  the  latter 
was  the  practice  of  our  common  teachers";  among  whom 
he  doubtless  included  the  dreary  shepherd  who  had  made 
so  little  out  of  the  verse  in  the  fourth  chapter  of  Philip- 
pians.  Everything  found  its  practical  level  in  that 
mind  at  last.  It  might  be  added  that  Franklin* s  stand 
on  this  occasion  was  but  in  keeping  with  a  final  word  of 
counsel  which  he  wrote  many  years  afterwards  to  his 
daughter  Sally,  when  he  was  descending  the  Delaware  on 
his  way  to  England.  After  enjoining  upon  her  especial 
attention  her  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  he  continued: 
"Yet  I  do  not  mean  you  should  despise  sermons,  even 
of  the  preachers  you  dislike,  for  the  discourse  is  often 
much  better  than  the  man,  as  sweet  and  clear  waters 
come  through  very  dirty  earth." 

After  the  Hemphill  disappointment,  he  ceased  to  attend 
the  church  in  which  his  protege  had  come  to  grief,  though 
he  continued  to  subscribe  to  the  support  of  its  minister 
for  many  years.  He  took  a  pew  in  an  Episcopal  Church, 
Christ  Church,  and  here  he  was  careful  that  his  family 
should  regularly  worship  every  Sunday,  notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  he  was  too  busy  again  with  his  studies  on 
that  day  to  worship  there  himself,  or  placed  too  much 
confidence  in  his  Art  of  Virtue  and  Articles  of  Belief  and 
Acts  of  Religion  to  feel  the  need  for  doing  so.  Here  too 
his  daughter  and  his  son  Francis  who  died  in  childhood 
were  baptized,  and  here  his  wife  and  himself  were  buried. 
While  he  rarely  attended  the  services  at  this  church,  he 
was  one  of  its  mainstays  in  every  pecuniary  sense. 

In  more  than  one  particular,  Franklin  was  lax  in  France 
where  he  was  only  liberal  in  America.  At  any  rate  he 
was  even  less  of  a  Sabbatarian  in  the  former  country 
than  he  was  in  the  latter.     As  respects  observance  of  the 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  71 

Sabbath,  he  fully  fell  in  with  French  usages  and  was  in 
the  habit  of  setting  apart  the  day  as  a  day  for  attending 
the  play  or  opera,  entertaining  his  friends,  or  amusing  him- 
self with  chess  or  cards.  One  of  Poor  Richard's  maxim's 
was:  "Work  as  if  you  were  to  live  a  hundred  years, 
pray  as  if  you  were  to  die  to-morrow,' \  and,  while  Franklin 
was  not  the  person  to  pray  in  just  that  rapt  fashion,  he 
seems  to  have  thought  rather  better  of  prayer  than  of 
other  religious  ceremonies.  In  the  letter  of  caution  to 
his  daughter  Sally,  from  which  we  have  already  quoted, 
he  tells  her,  "Go  constantly  to  church,  whoever  preaches. 
The  act  of  devotion  in  the  Common  Prayer  Book  is  your 
principal  business  there,  and  if  properly  attended  to, 
will  do  more  towards  amending  the  heart  than  sermons 
generally  can  do.  For  they  were  composed  by  men  of 
much  greater  piety  and  wisdom,  than  our  common  com- 
posers of  sermons  can  pretend  to  be."  He  promptly 
repelled  an  intimation  of  his  sister  Jane  that  he  was  op- 
posed to  divine  worship  with  the  statement  that,  so  far 
from  thinking  that  God  was  not  to  be  worshipped,  he 
had  composed  and  written  a  whole  book  of  devotions  for 
his  own  use;  meaning  his  Articles  of  Belief  and  Acts  of 
Religion.  This  statement  always  brings  back  to  us  the 
reply  of  Charles  Sumner,  when  he  was  very  sick,  and  was 
asked  whether  he  was  prepared  to  die,  viz.  that  he  had 
read  the  Old  Testament  in  the  Greek  version.  A  glance 
at  the  "First  Principles,"  with  which  the  book  begins, 
would  hardly,  we  fear,  have  allayed  the  fears  of  Jane. 
That  Franklin  should  ever,  even  at  the  age  of  twenty- two, 
have  composed  anything  in  the  way  of  a  creed  so  fanciful, 
not  to  say  fantastic,  is  nothing  short  of  an  enormity, 
even  more  startlingly  out  of  harmony  with  his  usually 
sound  and  sure-footed  intelligence  than  the  whimsical 
letter  to  General  Charles  Lee,  in  which,  on  the  eve  of  the 
American  Revolution,  he  advised  a  return  to  bows  and 
arrows  as  efficient  instruments  of  modern  warfare.      "I 


72         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

believe,"  commences  the  creed,  "there  is  one  supreme, 
most  perfect  Being,  Author  and  Father  of  the  Gods 
themselves.  For  I  believe  that  Man  is  not  the  most 
perfect  Being  but  one,  rather  that  as  there  are  many- 
Degrees  of  Beings  his  Inferiors,  so  there  are  many  Degrees 
of  Beings  superior  to  him."  Then,  after  quite  a  lengthy 
preamble,  follows  this  Confession  of  Faith: 

Therefore  I  think  it  seems  required  of  me,  and  my  Duty 
as  a  Man,  to  pay  Divine  Regards  to  something. 

I  conceive  then,  that  The  infinite  has  created  many  beings 
or  Gods,  vastly  superior  to  Man,  who  can  better  conceive 
his  Perfections  than  we,  and  return  him  a  more  rational  and 
glorious  Praise. 

As,  among  Men,  the  Praise  of  the  Ignorant  or  of  Children, 
is  not  regarded  by  the  ingenious  Painter  or  Architect,  who  is 
rather  honour'd  and  pleas'd  with  the  approbation  of  Wise 
Men  &  Artists. 

It  may  be  that  these  created  Gods  are  immortal;  or  it  may 
be  that  after  many  Ages,  they  are  changed,  and  others  Supply 
their  Places. 

Howbeit,  I  conceive  that  each  of  these  is  exceeding  wise 
and  good,  and  very  powerful;  and  that  Each  has  made  for 
himself  one  glorious  Sun,  attended  with  a  beautiful  and  admir- 
able System  of  Planets. 

It  is  that  particular  Wise  and  Good  God,  who  is  the  author 
and  owner  of  our  System,  that  I  propose  for  the  object  of 
my  praise  and  adoration. 

Under  the  same  head  of  "First  Principles,"  there  is  a 
slight  flavor  of  the  Art  of  Virtue:  " Since  without  Virtue 
Man  can  have  no  Happiness  in  this  World,  I  firmly  believe 
he  delights  to  see  me  Virtuous,  because  he  is  pleased  when 
he  sees  Me  Happy." 

That  one  of  the  sanest,  wisest,  and  most  terrene  of 
great  men,  and  a  man,  too,  who  was  not  supposed  in  his 
time  to  have  any  very  firm  belief  in  the  existence  of  even 
one  God,  should,  young  as  he  was,  have  peopled  the  stellar 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  73 

spaces  with  such  a  hierarchy,  half  pantheistic,  half  feudal 
as  this,  is,  we  take  it,  one  of  the  most  surprising  phe- 
nomena in  the  history  of  the  human  intellect.  James 
Parton  surmises  that  the  idea  probably  filtered  to  Frank- 
lin, when  he  was  a  youth  in  London,  through  Dr.  Pem- 
berton,  the  editor  of  the  third  edition  of  the  Principia, 
from  a  conjecture  thrown  out  in  conversation  by  Sir 
Isaac  Newton.  It  reappears  in  Franklin's  Arabian  Tale. 
"Men  in  general,"  says  Belubel,  the  Strong,  "do  not 
know,  but  thou  knowest,  that  in  ascending  from  an 
elephant  to  the  infinitely  Great,  Good,  and  Wise,  there 
is  also  a  long  gradation  of  beings,  who  possess  powers 
and  faculties  of  which  thou  canst  yet  have  no  conception." 
The  next  head  in  the  book  of  devotions  is  "Adoration," 
under  which  is  arranged  a  series  of  liturgical  statements, 
accompanied  by  a  recurrent  note  of  praise,  and  preceded 
by  an  invocation  and  the  following  prelude  in  the  nature 
of  a  stage  direction: 

Being  mindful  that  before  I  address  the  Deity,  my  soul  ought 
to  be  calm  and  serene,  free  from  Passion  and  Perturbation, 
or  otherwise  elevated  with  Rational  Joy  and  Pleasure,  I 
ought  to  use  a  Countenance  that  expresses  a  filial  Respect, 
mixed  with  a  kind  of  Smiling,  that  Signifies  inward  Joy, 
and  Satisfaction,  and  Admiration.1 

The  liturgical  statements  are  followed  by  another  direc- 
tion that  it  will  not  be  improper  now  to  read  part  of  some 
such  book  as  Ray's  Wisdom  of  God  in  the  Creation,  or 
Blackmore  on  the  Creation,  or  the  Archbishop  of  Cambray's 
Demonstration  of  the  Being  of  a  God,  etc.,  or  else  to  spend 
some  minutes  in  a  serious  silence  contemplating  on  those 

xWe  are  informed  by  Franklin  in  the  Autobiography  that  he  inserted 
on  one  page  of  his  "little  book"  a  "scheme  of  employment  for  the  twenty- 
four  hours  of  a  natural  day. ' '  The  opening  injunction  of  this  plan  of  conduct 
brings  the  wash-basin  and  the  altar  into  rather  amusing  juxtaposition: 
"Rise,  wash,  and  address  Powerful  Goodness!" 


74        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

subjects.  Then  follows  another  direction  calling  for 
Milton's  glorious  Hymn  to  the  Creator;  then  still  another 
calling  for  the  reading  of  some  book,  or  part  of  a  book, 
discoursing  on,  and  inciting  to,  Moral  Virtue;  then  a 
succession  of  resonant  supplications,  adjuring  the  aid  of 
the  particular  Wise  and  Good  God,  who  is  the  author  and 
owner  (or  subfeudatory)  of  our  System,  in  Franklin's 
efforts  to  shun  certain  vices  and  infirmities,  and  to  practice 
certain  virtues;  all  of  the  vices,  infirmities  and  virtues 
being  set  forth  in  the  most  specific  terms  with  the  lim- 
pidity which  marked  everything  that  Franklin  ever  wrote, 
sacred  or  profane.  One  of  the  supplications  was  that  he 
might  be  loyal  to  his  Prince  and  faithful  to  his  country. 
This  he  was  until  it  became  impossible  for  him  to  be 
loyal  to  both.  Another  was  that  he  might  avoid  lascivi- 
ousness.  The  prayer  was  not  answered;  for  William 
Franklin,  on  account  of  whose  birth  he  should  have  re- 
ceived twenty-one  lashes  under  the  laws  of  Pennsylvania, 
was  born  about  two  years  after  it  was  framed.  Creed 
and  liturgy  end  with  a  series  of  thanks  for  the  benefits 
which  the  author  had  already  received.  Both  creed  and 
liturgy,  we  are  told  by  James  Parton,  were  recorded  with 
the  utmost  care  and  elegance  in  a  little  pocket  prayer-book, 
and  the  liturgy  Franklin  practiced  for  many  years.  For 
a  large  part  of  his  life,  he  bore  his  book  of  devotions  and 
his  book  of  moral  practice  about  on  his  person  wherever 
he  went,  as  if  they  were  amulets  to  ward  off  every  evil 
inclination  upon  his  part  to  yield  to  what  he  calls  in  the 
Autobiography  "the  unremitting  attraction  of  ancient 
habits." 

It  is  likewise  a  fact  that,  notwithstanding  the  high 
opinion  that  he  expressed  to  his  daughter  Sally  of  the 
Book  of  Common  Prayer,  he  undertook  at  one  time  to 
assist  Sir  Francis  Dashwood,  Lord  Le  Despencer  in  re- 
forming it.  The  delicious  incongruity  of  the  thing  is 
very  much  enhanced  when  we  remember  that  a  part  of 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  75 

Sir  Francis'  religious  training  for  the  task  consisted  in  the 
circumstance  that,  in  his  wilder  days,  he  had  been  the 
Abbot  of  Medmenham  Abbey,  which  numbered  among 
its  godless  monks — named  the  Franciscans  after  himself 
— the  Earl  of  Sandwich,  Paul  Whitehead,  Budd  Dodding- 
ton  and  John  Wilkes.  Over  the  portals  of  this  infamous 
retreat  was  written  "Do  what  you  please/ '  and  within  it 
the  licentious  invitation  was  duly  carried  into  practice 
by  perhaps  the  most  graceless  group  of  blasphemers  and 
libertines  that  England  had  ever  known.  However, 
when  Sir  Francis  and  Franklin  became  collaborators, 
the  former  had,  with  advancing  years,  apparently  reached 
the  conclusion  that  this  world  was  one  where  a  decent 
regard  should  be  paid  to  something  higher  than  ourselves 
in  preference  to  giving  ourselves  up  unreservedly  to  doing 
what  we  please,  and  intercourse,  bred  by  the  fact  that 
Sir  Francis  was  a  Joint  Postmaster-General  of  Great 
Britain  at  the  same  time  that  Franklin  was  Deputy 
Postmaster-General  for  America,  led  naturally  to  a  co- 
operative venture  on  their  part.  Of  Sir  Francis,  when 
the  dregs  of  his  life  were  settling  down  into  the  bottom 
of  the  glass,  leaving  nothing  but  the  better  elements  of 
his  existence  to  be  drawn  off,  Franklin  gives  us  a  genial 
picture.  Speaking  of  West  Wycombe,  Sir  Francis' 
country  seat,  he  says:  "But  a  pleasanter  Thing  is  the  kind 
Countenance,  the  facetious  and  very  intelligent  Conver- 
sation of  mine  Host,  who  having  been  for  many  Years 
engaged  in  publick  Affairs,  seen  all  Parts  of  Europe,  and 
kept  the  best  Company  in  the  World,  is  himself  the  best 
existing."  High  praise  this,  indeed,  from  a  man  who 
usually  had  a  social  equivalent  for  whatever  he  received 
from  an  agreeable  host!  Franklin  took  as  his  share  of 
the  revision  the  Catechism  and  the  Psalms.  Of  the 
Catechism,  he  retained  only  two  questions  (with  the 
answers),  "What  is  your  duty  to  God?"  and  "What  is 
your  duty  to  your  neighbor?  "     The'  Psalms  he  very  much 


76         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

shortened  by  omitting  the  repetitions  (of  which  he  found, 
he  said,  in  a  letter  to  Granville  Sharp,  more  than  he  could 
have  imagined)  and  the  imprecations,  which  appeared, 
he  said,  in  the  same  letter,  not  to  suit  well  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  forgiveness  of  injuries  and  doing  good  to  ene- 
mies. As  revised  by  the  two  friends,  the  book  was  shorn 
of  all  references  to  the  Sacraments  and  to  the  divinity  of 
Our  Lord,  and  the  commandments  in  the  Catechism,  the 
Nicene  and  the  Athanasian  Creeds,  and  even  the  Can- 
ticle, "All  ye  Works  of  the  Lord,"  so  close  to  the  heart 
of  nature,  were  ruthlessly  deleted.  All  of  the  Apostle's 
Creed,  too,  went,  except,  to  use  Franklin's  words,  "the 
parts  that  are  most  intelligible  and  most  essential." 
The  Te  Deum  and  the  Venite  were  also  pared  down  to 
very  small  proportions.  Some  of  the  other  changes  as- 
sumed the  form  of  abridgments  of  the  services  provided 
for  Communion,  Infant  Baptism,  Confirmation,  the 
Visitation  of  the  Sick  and  the  Burial  of  the  Dead.  Frank- 
lin loved  his  species  too  much,  we  may  be  sure,  not  to 
approve  unqualifiedly  the  resolution  of  Sir  Francis  to 
omit  wholly  "the  Commination,  and  all  cursing  of  man- 
kind." Nor  was  a  man,  whose  own  happy  marriage  had 
begun  with  such  little  ceremony,  likely  to  object  strongly 
to  the  abbreviation  of  the  service  for  the  solemnization 
of  Matrimony  upon  which  Sir  Francis  also  decided.  In 
fine,  the  whole  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  was  reduced 
to  nearly  one  half  its  original  compass.  The  preface 
was  written  by  Franklin.  Judging  from  its  terms,  the 
principal  motive  of  the  new  version  was  to  do  away  with 
the  physical  inconvenience  and  discomfort  caused  in  one 
way  or  another  by  long  services.  If  the  services  were 
abridged,  the  clergy  would  be  saved  a  great  deal  of  fatigue, 
many  pious  and  devout  persons,  unable  from  age  or  in- 
firmities to  remain  for  hours  in  a  cold  church,  would  then 
attend  divine  worship  and  be  comfortable,  the  younger 
people  would  probably  attend  oftener  and  more  cheer- 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  77 

fully,  the  sick  would  not  find  the  prayer  for  the  visita- 
tion of  the  sick  such  a  burden  in  their  weak  and  distressed 
state,  and  persons,  standing  around  an  open  grave,  could 
put  their  hats  on  again  after  a  much  briefer  period  of 
exposure.  Other  reasons  are  given  for  the  revision,  but 
the  idea  of  holding  out  brevity  as  a  kind  of  bait  to  wor- 
ship is  the  dominant  one  that  runs  through  the  Preface. 
It  is  written  exactly  as  if  there  was  no  such  thing  in  the 
world  as  hallowed  religious  traditions,  associations  or 
sentiments,  deep  as  Human  Love,  strong  as  Death,  to 
which  an  almost  sacrilegious  shock  would  be  given  by 
even  moderate  innovations.  "The  book,"  Franklin 
says  in  his  letter  to  Granville  Sharp,  "was  printed  for 
Wilkie,  in  St.  Paul's  Church  Yard,  but  never  much  no- 
ticed. Some  were  given  away,  very  few  sold,  and  I  sup- 
pose the  bulk  became  waste  paper.  In  the  prayers  so 
much  was  retrenched  that  approbation  could  hardly  be 
expected."  In  America,  the  Abridgment  was  known  as 
"Franklin's  Prayer  Book,"  and,  worthless  as  it  is,  in  a 
religious  sense,  since  it  became  rare,  Franklin's  fame  has 
been  known  to  give  a  single  copy  of  it  a  pecuniary  value 
of  not  less  than  one  thousand  dollars.  The  literary 
relations  of  Franklin  to  devotion  began  with  a  Creed 
as  eccentric  as  the  Oriental  notion  that  the  whole 
world  is  upheld  by  a  cow  with  blue  horns  and  ended 
with  partial  responsibility  for  a  Prayer  Book  almost  as 
devoid  of  a  true  religious  spirit  as  one  of  his  dissertations 
on  chimneys.  He  wasr  slow,  however,  to  renounce  a 
practical  aim,  when  once  formed.  The  abridged  Prayer 
Book  was  printed  in  1773,  and  some  fourteen  years 
afterwards  in  a  letter  to  Alexander  Small  he  expressed 
his  pleasure  at  hearing  that  it  had  met  with  the  approba- 
tion of  Small  and  "good  Mrs.  Baldwin."  "It  is  not 
yet,  that  I  know  of,"  he  said,  "received  in  public  Practice 
anywhere ;  but,  as  it  is  said  that  Good  Motions  never  die, 
perhaps  in  time  it  may  be  found  useful." 


78        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Another  incident  in  the  relations  of  Franklin  to  Prayer 
was  the  suggestion  made  by  him  in  the  Federal  Conven- 
tion of  1787  that  thenceforth  prayers,  imploring  the 
assistance  of  Heaven  and  its  blessing  on  the  deliberations  of 
the  Convention,  should  be  held  every  morning  before  the 
Convention  proceeded  to  business.  "In  this  Situation 
of  this  Assembly,  groping,  as  it  were,  in  the  dark  to  find 
Political  Truth,  and  scarce  able  to  distinguish  it  when 
presented  to  us,  how  has  it  happened,  Sir,"  he  asked, 
"that  we  have  not  hitherto  once  thought  of  humbly 
applying  to  the  Father  of  Lights  to  illuminate  our  Under- 
standings ?"  The  question  was  a  timely  one,  and  was 
part  of  an  eloquent  and  impressive  speech,  but  resulted 
in  nothing  more  fruitful  than  an  exclamatory  memoran- 
dum of  Franklin,  indignant  or  humorous  we  do  not  know 
which,  "The  convention,  except  three  or  four  persons, 
thought  prayers  unnecessary!" 

It  is  only  when  insisting  upon  the  charitable  and  fruit- 
ful side  of  religion  that  Franklin  has  any  wholesome  or 
winning  message  to  deliver  touching  it;  but,  when  doing 
this,  his  utterances  are  often  edifying  in  the  highest  degree. 
In  an  early  letter  to  his  father,  who  believed  that  the  son 
had  imbibed  some  erroneous  opinions  with  regard  to 
religion,  after  respectfully  reminding  his  father  that  it  is 
no  more  in  a  man's  power  to  think  than  to  look  like  an- 
other, he  used  these  words: 


My  mother  grieves  that  one  of  her  sons  is  an  Arian,  another 
an  Arminian.  What  an  Arminian  or  an  Arian  is,  I  cannot  say 
that  I  very  well  know.  The  truth  is,  I  make  such  distinctions 
very  little  my  study.  I  think  vital  religion  has  always  suffered, 
when  orthodoxy  is  more  regarded  than  virtue;  and  the  Scrip- 
tures assure  me,  that  at  the  last  day  we  shall  not  be  examined 
what  we  thought,  but  what  we  did;  and  our  recommendation 
will  not  be,  that  we  said,  Lord!  Lord!  but  that  we  did  good  to 
our  fellow  creatures.     (See  Matt,  xxv.) 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  79 

These  convictions  he  was  destined  to  reaffirm  over  and 
over  again  in  the  course  of  his  life.  They  were  most 
elaborately  stated  in  his  forty-eighth  year  in  a  letter  to 
Joseph  Huey.  He  had  received,  he  said,  much  kindness 
from  men,  to  whom  he  would  never  have  any  opportunity 
of  making  the  least  direct  return,  and  numberless  mercies 
from  God  who  was  infinitely  above  being  benefited  by  our 
services.  Those  kindnesses  from  men  he  could  therefore 
only  return  on  their  fellow  men,  and  he  could  only  show 
his  gratitude  for  these  mercies  from  God  by  a  readiness 
to  help  God's  other  children  and  his  brethren.  For  he 
did  not  think  that  thanks  and  compliments,  though  re- 
peated weekly,  could  discharge  our  real  obligations  to 
each  other  and  much  less  those  to  our  Creator.  He  that 
for  giving  a  draught  of  water  to  a  thirsty  person  should 
expect  to  be  paid  with  a  good  plantation,  would  be  modest 
in  his  demands  compared  with  those  who  think  they 
deserve  Heaven  for  the  little  good  they  do  on  earth.  The 
faith  Huey  mentioned,  he  said,  had  doubtless  its  use  in 
the  world ;  but  he  wished  it  were  more  productive  of  good 
works  than  he  had  generally  seen  it;  he  meant  real  good 
works,  works  of  kindness,  charity,  mercy  and  public 
spirit;  not  holiday  keeping,  sermon  reading  or  hearing, 
performing  church  ceremonies,  or  making  long  prayers, 
filled  with  flatteries  and  compliments,  despised  even  by 
wise  men  and  much  less  capable  of  pleasing  the  Deity. 
The  worship  of  God  was  a  duty;  the  hearing  reading  of 
sermons  might  be  useful,  but  if  men  rested  in  hearing 
and  praying,  as  too  many  did,  it  was  as  if  a  tree  should 
value  itself  on  being  watered  and  putting  forth  leaves 
though  it  never  produced  any  fruit. 

Your  great  Master  [he  continued]  tho't  much  less  of  these 
outward  Appearances  and  Professions  than  many  of  his 
modern  Disciples.  He  prefer'd  the  Doers  of  the  Word,  to 
the  meer  Hearers;  the  Son  that  seemingly  refus'd  to  obey  his 


80        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Father,  and  yet  perform'd  his  Commands,  to  him  that  pro- 
fess'd  his  Readiness,  but  neglected  the  Work,  the  heretical 
but  charitable  Samaritan,  to  the  uncharitable  tho'  orthodox 
Priest  and  sanctified  Levite;  &  those  who  gave  Food  to  the 
hungry,  Drink  to  the  Thirsty,  Raiment  to  the  Naked,  Enter- 
tainment to  the  Stranger,  and  Relief  to  the  Sick,  tho'  they 
never  heard  of  his  Name,  he  declares  shall  in  the  last  Day  be 
accepted,  when  those  who  cry  Lord!  Lord!  who  value  them- 
selves on  their  Faith,  tho'  great  enough  to  perform  Miracles, 
but  have  neglected  good  Works,  shall  be  rejected. 

And  then,  after  a  word  about  the  modesty  of  Christ,  he 
breaks  out  into  something  as  much  like  a  puff  of  anger  as 
anything  that  his  perfect  mental  balance  would  allow; 
"But  now-a-days  we  have  scarce  a  little  Parson,  that 
does  not  think  it  the  Duty  of  every  Man  within  his  Reach 
to  sit  under  his  petty  Ministrations.' '  Altogether,  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Hemphill  never  stole,  and  few  clergymen  ever 
composed,  a  more  striking  sermon  on  good  works  than 
this  letter.  And  this  was  because  the  doctrines  that  it 
preached  belonged  fully  as  much  to  the  province  of 
Human  Benevolence  as  of  Religion. 

A  pretty  sermon  also  was  the  letter  of  Franklin  to  his 
sister  Jane  on  Faith,  Hope  and  Charity.  After  quoting 
a  homely  acrostic,  in  which  his  uncle  Benjamin,  who, 
humble  as  his  place  on  Parnassus  was,  fumbled  poetry 
with  distinctly  better  success  than  the  nephew,  had 
advised  Jane  to  "  raise  faith  and  hope  three  stories  higher," 
he  went  on  to  read  her  a  lecture  which  is  too  closely  knit 
to  admit  of  compression: 

You  are  to  understand,  then,  that  faith,  hope,  and  charity 
have  been  called  the  three  steps  of  Jacob's  ladder,  reaching 
from  earth  to  heaven;  our  author  calls  them  stories,  likening 
religion  to  a  building,  and  these  are  the  three  stories  of  the 
Christian  edifice.  Thus  improvement  in  religion  is  called 
building  up  and  edification.     Faith  is  then  the  ground  floor, 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  81 

hope  is  up  one  pair  of  stairs.  My  dear  beloved  Jenny,  don't 
delight  so  much  to  dwell  in  those  lower  rooms,  but  get  as  fast 
as  you  can  into  the  garret,  for  in  truth  the  best  room  in  the 
house  is  charity.  .  For  my  part,  I  wish  the  house  was  turned 
upside  down ;  'tis  so  difficult  (when  one  is  fat)  to  go  up  stairs ; 
and  not  only  so,  but  I  imagine  hope  and  faith  may  be  more 
firmly  built  upon  charity,  than  charity  upon  faith  and  hope. 
However  that  may  be,  I  think  it  the  better  reading  to  say — 

"Raise  faith  and  hope  one  story  higher." 

Correct  it  boldly,  and  I'll  support  the  alteration;  for,  when 
you  are  up  two  stories  already,  if  you  raise  your  building  three 
stories  higher  you  will  make  five  in  all,  which  is  two  more 
than  there  should  be,  you  expose  your  upper  rooms  more  to 
the  winds  and  storms;  and,  besides,  I  am  afraid  the  founda- 
tion will  hardly  bear  them,  unless  indeed  you  build  with  such 
light  stuff  as  straw  and  stubble,  and  that,  you  know,  won't 
stand  fire.     Again,  where  the  author  says, 

"Kindness  of  heart  by  words  express," 

strike  out  words  and  put  in  deeds.  The  world  is  too  full  of 
compliments  already.  They  are  the  rank  growth  of  every 
soil,  and  choak  the  good  plants  of  benevolence,  and  benefi- 
cence; nor  do  I  pretend  to  be  the  first  in  this  comparison  of 
words  and  actions  to  plants;  you  may  remember  an  ancient 
poet,  whose  works  we  have  all  studied  and  copied  at  school 
long  ago. 

"A  man  of  words  and  not  of  deeds 
Is  like  a  garden  full  of  weeds." 

'Tis  a  pity  that  good  works,  among  some  sorts  of  people,  are 
so  little  valued,  and  good  words  admired  in  their  stead:  I 
mean  seemingly  pious  discourses,  instead  of  humane  bene- 
volent actions. 

To  the  Rev.  Thomas  Coombe  Franklin  expressed  the 
opinion  that,  unless  pulpit  eloquence  turned  men  to 
righteousness,  the  preacher  or  the  priest  was  not  merely 

VOL.  I — 6 


82        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

sounding  brass  or  a  tinkling  cymbal,  which  were  innocent 
things,  but  rather  like  the  cunning  man  in  the  Old  Baily 
who  conjured  and  told  fools  their  fortunes  to  cheat  them 
out  of  their  money. 

The  general  spirit  of  these  various  utterances  of  Frank- 
lin on  vital  religion  were  sarcastically  condensed  in  a 
remark  of  Poor  Richard:  "Serving  God  is  doing  good  to 
Man,  but  praying  is  thought  an  easier  serving,  and 
therefore  most  generally  chosen/ * 

In  forming  an  accurate  conception  of  the  influences  by 
which  the  mind  of  Franklin  was  brought  into  its  posture 
of  antagonism  or  indifference  to  the  doctrinal  side  of 
religion,  it  is  necessary  to  take  into  consideration  not  only 
the  innate  attributes  of  his  intellect  and  character  but 
also  the  external  pressure  to  which  his  opinions  were 
subjected  in  his  early  life.  It  was  the  religious  intoler- 
ance and  prescriptive  spirit  of  the  Puritan  society,  in 
which  he  was  born  and  reared,  which  drove  him,  first, 
into  dissent,  and  then,  into  disbelief.  Borne  the  day  he 
was  born,  if  tradition  may  be  believed,  though  the  ground 
was  covered  with  snow,  to  the  Old  South  Church  in 
Boston,  and  baptized  there,  so  that  he  might  escape 
every  chance  of  dying  an  unregenerate  and  doomed  infant, 
he  grew  into  boyhood  to  find  himself  surrounded  by  con- 
ditions which*  tended  to  either  reduce  the  free  impulses 
of  his  nature  to  supine  or  sullen  submissiorhor  to  force  him 
into  active  revolt.  It  is  hard  to  suppress  a  smile  when 
he  tells  us  in  the  Autobiography  that  his  father,  who 
doubtless  knew  the  difference  between  an  Arian  and  an 
Arminian  even  better  than  his  mother,  intended  to  devote 
him  as  the  tithe  of  his  sons  to  the  service  of  the  Church. 
He  smiles  himself  when  he  adds  with  a  trace  of  his  former 
commercial  calling  that  his  uncle  Benjamin  approved  of 
the  idea  and  proposed  to  give  him  all  his  short-hand 
volumes  of  sermons  "as  a  stock"  Franklin  supposed, 
1 '  to  set  up  with. ' '     The  intention  of  Josiah  was  soon  aban- 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  83 

doned,  and  Benjamin  became  the  apprentice  of  his  brother 
James,  the  owner  and  publisher  of  the  Boston  Courant, 
the  fourth  newspaper  published  in  America.  During  the 
course  of  this  apprenticeship,  first,  as  a  contributor  to 
the  Courant,  under  the  nom  de  plume  of  Silence  Dogood, 
and,  then,  as  its  publisher  in  the  place  of  his  brother,  who 
had  incurred  the  censure  of  the  Puritan  Lord  Brethren, 
he  was  drawn  into  the  bitter  attack  made  by  it  upon  the 
religious  intolerance  and  narrowness  of  the  times.  During 
its  career,  the  paper  plied  the  ruling  dignitaries  of  the 
Boston  of  that  day  with  so  many  clever  little  pasquinades 
that  the  Rev.  Increase  Mather  was  compelled  to  signify 
to  the  printer  that  he  would  have  no  more  of  their  wicked 
Courants. 

I  that  have  known  what  New  England  was  from  the  Be- 
ginning [he  said]  can  not  but  be  troubled  to  see  the  Degeneracy 
of  this  Place.  I  can  well  remember  when  the  Civil  Govern- 
ment would  have  taken  an  effectual  Course  to  suppress  such 
a  Cursed  Libel!  which  if  it  be  not  done  I  am  afraid  that  some 
Awful  Judgment  will  come  upon  this  Land,  and  the  Wrath 
of  God  will  arise,  and  there  will  be  no  Remedy. 

Undaunted,  the  wicked  Courant  took  pains  to  let  the 
public  know  that,  while  the  angry  minister  was  no  longer 
one  of  its  subscribers,  he  sent  his  grandson  for  the  paper 
every  week,  and  by  paying  a  higher  price  for  it  in  that 
way  was  a  more  valuable  patron  than  ever.  The  indigna- 
tion of  another  writer,  supposed  to  be  Cotton  Mather, 
lashed  itself  into  such  fury  that  it  seemed  as  if  the  vile 
sheet  would  be  buried  beneath  a  pyramid  of  vituperative 
words.  "The  Courant"  he  declared,  was  "a  notorious, 
scandalous' '  newspaper,  "full freighted  with  nonsense,  un- 
mannerliness,  railery,  prophaneness,  immorality,  arro- 
gance, calumnies,  lies,  contradictions,  and  what  not,  all 
tending  to  quarrels  and  divisions,  and  to  debauch  and 
corrupt  the  minds  and  manners  of  New  England."     For 


84        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

a  time,  the  Church  was  too  much  for  the  scoffers.  James 
Franklin  was  not  haled  for  his  sins  before  the  Judgment 
seat  of  God,  as  Increase  Mather  said  he  might  be,  speedily, 
though  a  young  man,  but  he  was,  as  we  shall  hereafter 
see  more  in  detail,  reduced  to  such  a  plight  by  the  hand 
of  civil  authority  that  he  had  to  turn  over  the  manage- 
ment of  the  Courant  to  Benjamin,  whose  tart  wit  and 
literary  skill  made  it  more  of  a  cursed  libel  than  ever  to 
arbitrary  power  and  clerical  bigotry. 

The  daring  state  of  license,  into  which  the  sprightly 
boy  fell,  during  his  connection  with  the  Courant,  is  clearly 
revealed  in  the  letter  contributed  by  Silence  Dogood  to 
it  on  the  subject  of  Harvard  College.  In  this  letter, 
she  tells  how  the  greater  part  of  the  rout  that  left  Harvard 
College  "went  along  a  large  beaten  Path,  which  led  to  a 
Temple  at  the  further  End  of  the  Plain,  call'd,  The  Temple 
of  Theology.11  "The  Business  of  those  who  were  em- 
ployed in  this  Temple  being  laborious  and  painful,  I 
wonder'd  exceedingly,"  she  said,  "to  see  so  many  go 
towards  it;  but  while  I  was  pondering  this  Matter  in  my 
Mind,  I  spy'd  Pecunia  behind  a  Curtain,  beckoning  to 
them  with  her  Hand,  which  Sight  immediately  satisfy'd 
me  for  whose  Sake  it  was,  that  a  great  Part  of  them  (I 
will  not  say  all)  travel'd  that  Road."  While  the  Courant 
was  running  its  lively  course,  young  Franklin  was  shun- 
ning church  on  Sundays,  reading  Shaftesbury  and 
Anthony  Collins,  and  drifting  further  and  further  away 
from  all  the  fixed  shore-lights  of  religious  faith. 

Then  came  the  hegira,  which  ended,  as  all  the  world 
knows,  at  Philadelphia.  The  first  place  curiously  enough, 
in  which  the  fugitive  slept  after  reaching  that  city,  was 
the  great  Quaker  Meeting  House,  whither  he  had  been 
swept  by  the  concourse  of  clean-dressed  people,  that  he 
had  seen  walking  towards  it,  when  he  was  sauntering 
aimlessly  about  the  streets  of  his  new  home,  shortly  after 
his  arrival.     "I  sat  down  among  them,"  he  says  in  the 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  85 

Autobiography,  "and,  after  looking  round  awhile  and  hear- 
ing nothing  said,  being  very  drowsy  thro*  labour  and 
want  of  rest  the  preceding  night,  I  fell  fast  asleep,  and 
continu'd  so  till  the  meeting  broke  up,  when  one  was 
kind  enough  to  rouse  me."  The  halcyon  calm  of  this 
meeting  offers  a  strange  enough  contrast  to  the  "disputa- 
tious turn"  which  had  been  engendered  in  him  as  he  tells 
us  by  his  father's  "books  of  dispute  about  religion" 
before  he  left  Boston. 

The  state  of  mind  with  respect  to  religion  that  he 
brought  with  him  to  Philadelphia  is  thus  described  by  him 
in  the  Autobiography: 

My  parents  had  early  given  me  religious  impressions,  and 
brought  me  through  my  childhood  piously  in  the  Dissenting 
way.  But  I  was  scarce  fifteen,  when,  after  doubting  by  turns 
of  several  points,  as  I  found  them  disputed  in  the  different 
books  I  read,  I  began  to  doubt  of  Revelation  itself.  Some 
books  against  Deism  fell  into  my  hands;  they  were  said  to  be 
the  substance  of  sermons  preached  at  Boyle's  lectures.  It 
happened  that  they  wrought  an  effect  on  me  quite  contrary 
to  what  was  intended  by  them;  for  the  arguments  of  the  Deists, 
which  were  quoted  to  be  refuted,  appeared  to  me  much  stronger 
than  the  refutations. 

Before  the  inevitable  reaction  set  in,  we  obtain  from 
the  Autobiography  a  few  other  items  of  religious  or  semi- 
religious  interest.  A  passing  reference  has  already  been 
made  to  Keimer's  invitation  to  Franklin  to  unite  with 
him  in  founding  another  sect.  He  had  been  so  often 
trepanned  by  Franklin's  Socratic  method  of  argument 
that  he  had  finally  come  to  entertain  a  great  respect  for 
it.  He  was  to  preach  the  doctrines,  and  his  co -laborer 
was  to  confound  all  opponents.  As  he  was  in  the  habit 
of  wearing  his  beard  at  full  length,  because  somewhere 
in  the  Mosaic  Law  it  was  said,  "Thou  shalt  not  mar  the 
corners  of  thy  beard";  and  was  also  in  the  habit  of  keep- 


86        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

ing  the  seventh  day  as  his  Sabbath,  he  insisted  that  these 
two  habits  of  his  should  be  enjoined  as  essential  points 
of  discipline  upon  the  adherents  of  the  new  creed.  Frank- 
lin agreed  to  acquiesce  in  this  upon  the  condition  that 
Keimer  would  confine  himself  to  a  vegetable  diet.  The 
latter  consented,  and,  though  a  great  glutton,  ate  no 
animal  food  for  three  months.  During  this  period,  their 
victuals  were  dressed  and  brought  to  them  by  a  woman 
in  their  neighborhood  who  had  been  given  by  Franklin 
a  list  of  forty  dishes,  to  be  prepared  for  them  at  different 
times,  in  all  which  there  was  neither  fish,  flesh  nor  fowl. 
"The  whim,"  he  declared,  "suited  me  the  better  at  this 
time  from  the  cheapness  of  it,  not  costing  us  above  eigh- 
teen pence  sterling  each  per  week."  At  the  termination 
of  three  months,  however,  Keimer  could  live  up  to  his 
Pythagorean  vow  no  longer,  invited  two  of  his  women 
friends  and  Franklin  to  dine  with  him,  and  ordered  a 
roast  pig  for  the  occasion.  Unfortunately  for  his  guests, 
the  pig  was  placed  a  little  prematurely  upon  the  table, 
and  was  all  consumed  by  him  before  they  arrived.  With 
the  disappearance  of  the  pig,  the  new  sect  came  to  an 
end  too. 

As  sharp  as  the  contrast  between  Franklin's  spirit  and 
the  dove-like  peace  that  brooded  over  the  Great  Quaker 
Meeting  House,  was  the  contrast  between  it  and  that  of 
the  self-devoted  nun,  whom  he  was  once  permitted  to 
visit  in  the  garret,  in  which  she  had  immured  herself,  of 
his  lodging  house  in  Duke  Street,  London,  opposite  the 
Romish  Chapel.  As  there  was  no  nunnery  in  England, 
she  had  resolved  to  lead  the  life  of  a  nun  as  nearly  as 
possible  under  the  circumstances.  Accordingly  she  had 
donated  all  her  estate  to  charitable  uses,  reserving  only 
twelve  pounds  a  year  to  live  on,  and  out  of  this  sum  she 
still  gave  a  great  deal  to  charity,  subsisting  herself  on 
water  gruel  only,  and  using  no  fire  but  to  boil  it.  For 
many  years,  she  had  been  allowed  to  live  in  her  garret 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  87 

free  of  charge  by  successive  Catholic  tenants  of  the  house, 
as  they  deemed  it  a  blessing  to  have  her  there.  A  priest 
visited  her  to  confess  her  every  day.  When  asked  how 
she  could  possibly  find  so  much  employment  for  a  confes- 
sor, she  replied:  "Oh!  It  is  impossible  to  avoid  vain 
thoughts."  Franklin  found  her  cheerful  and  polite  and  of 
pleasant  conversation.  Her  room  was  clean,  but  had  no 
other  furniture  than  a  mattress,  a  table  with  a  crucifix 
and  book,  a  stool,  which  she  gave  him  to  sit  on,  and  a 
picture  over  the  chimney  of  Saint  Veronica,  displaying 
her  handkerchief,  with  the  miraculous  figure  of  Christ's 
bleeding  face  on  it,  which  she  explained  to  Franklin,  of 
all  the  persons  in  the  world,  with  great  seriousness.  She 
looked  pale,  but  was  never  sick.  "  I  give  it,"  says  Frank- 
lin in  the  Autobiography,  "as  another  instance  on  how 
small  an  income,  life  and  health  may  be  supported." 
At  no  period  of  his  existence,  was  he  less  likely  to  be  in 
sympathy  with  the  ascetic  side  of  religion  than  at  this. 
Indeed,  while  in  London  at  this  time,  believing  that  some 
of  the  reasonings  of  Wollaston's  Religion  of  Nature, 
which  he  was  engaged  in  composing  at  Palmer's  Printing 
House  in  Bartholomew  Close,  where  he  was  employed  as 
a  printer,  were  not  well  founded,  he  wrote  A  Dissertation 
on  Liberty  and  Necessity,  Pleasure  and  Pain,  and  dedicated 
it  to  his  rapscallion  friend,  James  Ralph,  whose  own  ideas 
about  Liberty  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  he  had 
deserted  his  family  in  Philadelphia  to  seek  his  fortune  in 
England.  This  pamphlet  Franklin  afterwards  came  to 
regard  as  one  of  the  errata  of  his  life,  and,  of  the  one  hun- 
dred copies  of  it  that  were  printed,  he  then  burnt  all  that 
he  could  lay  his  hands  on  except  one  with  marginal 
notes  by  Lyons,  the  author  of  The  Infallibility  of  Human 
Judgment.  The  argument  of  the  pamphlet,  as  Frank- 
lin states  it  in  the  Autobiography,  was  that,  as  both  virtue 
and  vice  owed  their  origin  to  an  infinitely  wise,  good  and 
powerful  God,  "nothing  could  possibly  be  wrong  in  the 


88         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

world,"  and  vice  and  virtue  were  empty  distinctions. 
Franklin's  efforts  to  suppress  the  piece  were,  naturally 
enough,  ineffectual,  for  there  was  an  inextinguishable 
spark  of  vitality  in  almost  everything  that  he  ever  wrote. 
These  utterances  make  it  apparent  enough  that  the 
religious  character  of  Franklin  was  subject  to  too  many 
serious  limitations  to  justify  even  early  American  patriot- 
ism in  holding  him  up  as  an  exemplar  of  religious  or- 
thodoxy, although  our  incredulity  is  not  necessarily 
overtaxed  by  the  statement  of  Parson  Weems  that,  when 
Franklin  was  on  his  deathbed,  he  had  a  picture  of  Christ  on 
the  Cross  placed  in  such  a  situation  that  he  could  con- 
veniently rest  his  eyes  upon  it,  and  declared:  ''That's 
the  picture  of  Him  who  came  into  the  world  to  teach 
men  to  love  one  another."  This  kind  of  a  teacher, 
divine  or  human,  could  not  fail  to  awaken  in  him  some- 
thing as  nearly  akin  to  religious  reverence  as  his  nature 
was  capable  of  entertaining.  But  his  mental  and  moral 
constitution  was  one  to  which  it  was  impossible  that  the 
supernatural  or  miraculous  element  in  Religion  could 
address  a  persuasive  appeal.  "In  the  Affairs  of  this 
World,  Men  are  saved,  not  by  Faith,  but  by  Want  of 
it,"  said  Poor  Richard,  and  it  was  with  the  affairs  of  this 
World  that  Franklin  was  exclusively  concerned.  When 
he  visited  the  recluse  in  her  Duke  Street  garret,  it  was  not 
the  crucifix  and  book,  nor  the  picture  over  the  chimney 
of  Saint  Veronica  and  her  handkerchief  that  arrested  his 
attention,  nor  was  it  the  self-sacrificing  fidelity  of  the 
lonely  figure  under  harsh  restrictions  to  a  pure  and  un- 
selfish purpose.  It  was  rather  the  small  income,  with 
its  salutary  lesson  of  frugality  for  the  struggling  world 
outside,  on  which  she  contrived  to  support  life  and  health. 
If  he  deemed  a  set  of  sectarian  principles  to  be  whimsical, 
as  he  did  some  of  those  professed  by  the  Quakers,  he 
humored  them  in  the  spirit  of  his  wife  who,  he  reminded 
his  daughter  in  one  of  his  letters,  was  in  the  habit  of 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  89 

saying:  "If  People  can  be  pleased  with  small  Matters,  it 
is  a  Pity  but  they  should  have  them.*1  Few  men  have  ever 
been  more  familiar  with  the  Scriptures  than  he.  Some 
of  his  happiest  illustrations  were  derived  from  its  pictured 
narratives  and  rich  imagery,  but  the  idea  that  God  had 
revealed  His  purposes  to  His  children  in  its  pages  was  one 
not  congenial  with  his  sober  and  inquisitive  mental  out- 
look; and  equally  uncongenial  was  the  idea,  which  of  all 
others  has  exercised  the  profoundest  degree  of  religious 
influence  upon  the  human  heart,  that  Christ,  the  only 
begotten  son  of  our  Lord,  was  sent  into  the  world  to  re- 
deem us  from  our  sins  with  His  most  precious  blood. 
Even  his  belief  in  the  existence  of  a  superintending  Provi- 
dence and  a  system  of  rewards  and  punishments  here 
or  hereafter  for  our  moral  conduct  was  a  more  or  less 
vague,  floating  belief,  such  as  few  thoroughly  wise,  well- 
balanced  and  fair-minded  men,  who  have  given  any  real 
thought  to  the  universe,  in  which  they  lived,  have  ever 
failed  to  form  to  a  greater  or  less  degree.  In  a  word,  of 
that  real,  vital  religion,  which  vivifies  even  the  common, 
dull  details  of  our  daily  lives,  and  irradiates  with  cheerful 
hope  even  the  dark  abyss,  to  which  our  feet  are  hourly 
tending,  which  purifies  our  hearts,  refines  our  natures, 
quickens  our  sympathies,  exalts  our  ideals,  and  is  capable 
unassisted  of  inspiring  even  the  humblest  life  with  a  sub- 
dued but  noble  enthusiasm,  equal  to  all  the  shocks  of 
existence — of  this  religion  Franklin  had  none,  or  next  to 
none.  He  went  about  the  alteration  of  the  Book  of  Com- 
mon Prayer  exactly  as  if  he  were  framing  a  constitution 
for  the  Albany  Congress  or  for  the  Commonwealth  of 
Pennsylvania.  That  the  alterations  were  to  be  shaped 
by  any  but  purely  practical  considerations,  that  deep  re- 
ligious feeling  has  unreasoning  reservations  which  intui- 
tively resent  the  mere  suggestion  of  change,  he  does  not 
seem  to  have  realized  at  all.  Religion  to  him  was  like 
any  other  apparatus,  essential  to  the  well-being  of  or- 


90        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

ganized  society,  a  thing  to  be  fashioned  and  adapted  to 
its  uses  without  reference  to  anything  but  the  ordinary 
principles  of  utility.  "If  men  are  so  wicked  as  we  now 
see  them  with  religion,  what  would  they  be  if  without  it?" 
was  a  question  addressed  by  him  in  his  old  age  to  a  cor- 
respondent whom  he  was  advising  to  burn  a  skeptical 
manuscript  written  by  the  former. 

At  the  age  of  twenty,  Franklin  came  back  from  Lon- 
don to  Philadelphia,  and  it  was  then  that  the  reaction  in 
his  infidel  tendencies  took  place.  From  extreme  dissent 
he  was  brought  by  a  process  of  reasoning,  as  purely 
inductive  as  any  that  he  ever  pursued  as  a  philosopher, 
to  believe  that  he  had  wandered  off  into  the  paths  of 
error,  and  should  make  his  way  back  to  the  narrow  but 
safer  road.  Under  his  perverting  influence,  his  friend 
Collins  had  become  a  free-thinker,  and  Collins  had  soon 
acquired  a  habit  of  sotting  with  brandy,  and  had  never 
repaid  to  him  the  portion  of  Mr.  Vernon's  money  which  he 
had  borrowed  from  him.  Under  the  same  influence,  his 
friend,  Ralph  had  become  a  free-thinker,  and  Ralph  had 
been  equally  faithless  in  the  discharge  of  his  pecuniary 
obligations  to  him.  Sir  William  Keith,  the  Colonial 
Governor  of  Pennsylvania,  whose  fair  promises,  as  we 
shall  see,  had  led  him  on  a  fool's  errand  to  London,  was 
a  free-thinker,  and  Sir  William  had  proved  an  unprincipled 
cozener.  Benjamin  Franklin  himself  was  a  free-thinker, 
and  Benjamin  Franklin  had  forgotten  the  faith  that 
he  plighted  to  Deborah  Read,  and  had  converted  Mr. 
Vernon's  money  to  his  own  use.  The  final  result,  Frank- 
lin tells  us,  was  that  his  pamphlet  on  Liberty  and  Necessity 
appeared  now  not  so  clever  a  performance  as  he  once 
thought  it,  and  he  doubted  whether  some  error  had  not 
insinuated  itself  unperceived  into  his  argument,  so  as  to 
infect  all  that  followed,  as  was  common  with  metaphysical 
reasonings.  From  this  point,  the  drift  to  the  Articles  of 
Belief   and  Acts  of  Religion,  the  little  book  of  moral 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  91 

practice,  the  Art  of  Virtue,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Hemphill  and 
Christ  Church  was  natural  enough. 

We  might  add  that  the  views  upon  which  Franklin's 
mind  finally  settled  down  after  its  recoil  from  his  pam- 
phlet on  Liberty  and  Necessity  persisted  until  his  last 
day.  In  a  letter  to  Ezra  Stiles,  written  but  a  little  over 
a  month  before  his  death,  he  made  the  following  state- 
ment of  his  faith: 

You  desire  to  know  something  of  my  Religion.  It  is  the 
first  time  I  have  been  questioned  upon  it.  But  I  cannot 
take  your  Curiosity  amiss,  and  shall  endeavour  in  a  few  Words 
to  gratify  it.  Here  is  my  Creed.  -I  believe  in  one  God, 
Creator  of  the  Universe.  That  he  governs  it  by  his  Providence. 
That  he  ought  to  be  worshipped.  That  the  most  acceptable 
Service  we  render  to  him  is  doing  good  to  his  other  Children. 
That  the  soul  of  Man  is  immortal,  and  will  be  treated  with 
Justice  in  another  Life  respecting  its  Conduct  in  this.  These 
I  take  to  be  the  fundamental  Principles  of  all  sound  Religion, 
and  I  regard  them  as  you  do  in  whatever  Sect  I  meet  with 
them. 

As  to  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  my  Opinion  of  whom  you  particu- 
larly desire,  I  think  the  System  of  Morals  and  his  Religion, 
as  he  left  them  to  us,  the  best  the  World  ever  saw  or  is  likely 
to  see ;  but  I  apprehend  it  has  received  various  corrupting 
Changes,  and  I  have,  with  most  of  the  present  Dissenters  in 
England,  some  Doubts  as  to  his  Divinity;  tho'  it  is  a  question 
I  do  not  dogmatize  upon,  having  never  studied  it,  and  think 
it  needless  to  busy  myself  with  it  now,  when  I  expect  soon  an 
Opportunity  of  knowing  the  Truth  with  less  Trouble.  I  see 
no  harm,  however,  in  its  being  believed,  if  that  Belief  has  the 
good  Consequence,  as  probably  it  has,  of  making  his  Doctrines 
more  respected  and  better  observed;  especially  as  I  do  not 
perceive,  that  the  Supreme  takes  it  amiss,  by  distinguishing 
the  Unbelievers  in  his  Government  of  the  World  with  any 
peculiar  Marks  of  his  Displeasure. 

I  shall  only  add,  respecting  myself,  that,  having  experienced 
the  Goodness  of  that  Being  in  conducting  me  prosperously 


92         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

thro'  a  long  life,  I  have  no  doubt  of  its  Continuance  in  the 
next,  though  without  the  smallest  conceit  of  meriting  such 
Goodness. 

It  is  amusing  to  compare  this  letter  written  in  America 
to  the  President  of  Yale  College  with  what  Franklin  had 
previously  written  to  Madame  Brillon,  when  she  objected 
to  the  marriage  of  her  daughter  to  William  Temple  Frank- 
lin partly  on  the  score  of  religious  incompatibility:  "These 
are  my  ideas.  In  each  Religion,  there  are  certain  essen- 
tial things,  and  there  are  others  that  are  only  Forms  and 
Modes;  just  as  a  loaf  of  Sugar  may  happen  to  be  wrapped 
up  in  either  brown,  or  white  or  blue  Paper,  tied  up  with 
either  red  or  yellow  hempen  or  worsted  twine.  In  every 
instance  the  essential  thing  is  the  sugar  itself.  Now  the 
essentials  of  a  good  Religion  consist,  it  seems  to  me,  in 
these  5  Articles  -viz. "  Then  ensues  a  statement  of  practi- 
cally the  same  fundamental  tenets  as  those  that  he  after- 
wards laid  before  Ezra  Stiles;  except  that,  when  he  wrote 
to  Madame  Brillon,  he  was  not  certain  whether  we  should 
be  rewarded  or  punished  according  to  our  deserts  in  this 
life  or  in  the  life  to  come.  He  then  adds:  "These  Essen- 
tials are  found  in  both  your  Religion  and  ours,  the  differ- 
ences are  only  Paper  and  Twine." 

Dr.  Priestley,  in  his  Autobiography,  laments  that  a 
man  of  Dr.  Franklin's  general  good  character  and  great 
influence  should  have  been  an  unbeliever  in  Christianity, 
and  should  also  have  done  as  much  as  he  did  to  make 
others  unbelievers.  Franklin  acknowledged  to  this 
friend  that  he  had  not  given  as  much  attention  as  he 
ought  to  have  done  to  the  evidences  of  Christianity,  and, 
at  his  request,  Priestley  recommended  to  him  several 
books  on  the  subject,  which  he  does  not  seem  to  have 
read.  As  Priestley  himself  rejected  the  doctrines  of  the 
Trinity,  the  Atonement,  Original  Sin  and  Miraculous 
Inspiration,  and  considered  Christ  to  be  "a  mere  man," 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  93 

though  divinely  commissioned  and  assisted,  his  fitness 
for  the  office  of  winning  Franklin  over  to  Christianity 
might  well  have  been  questioned.  He  belonged  to  the 
same  category  as  Dr.  Richard  Price,  that  other  warm 
friend  of  Franklin,  who  came  into  Franklin's  mind  when 
Sir  John  Pringle  asked  him  whether  he  knew  where  he 
could  go  to  hear  a  preacher  of  rational  Christianity. 

Franklin,  it  passes  without  saying,  had  his  laugh  at 
Religion  as  he  had  at  everything  else  at  times.  "Some 
have  observed,"  he  says  of  the  clergy  in  his  Apology  for 
Printers,  "that  'tis  a  fruitful  Topic,  and  the  easiest  to 
be  witty  upon  of  all  others/ '  For  the  earliest  outbreak 
of  his  humor  on  the  subject,  we  are  indebted  to  William 
Temple  Franklin.  Young  Benjamin  found  the  long 
graces  uttered  by  his  father  before  and  after  meals  rather 
tedious.  "I  think,  father,"  said  he  one,  day  after  the 
provisions  for  the  winter  had  been  salted,  "if  you  were 
to  say  grace  over  the  whole  cask,  once  for  all,  it  would  be 
a  vast  saving  of  time."  Some  of  his  later  jests,  at  the 
expense  of  Religion,  read  as  if  they  were  conceived  at 
the  period,  upon  which  his  vow  of  silence  called  a  halt, 
when,  according  to  the  Autobiography,  he  was  getting 
into  the  habit  of  prattling,  punning  and  joking,  which 
only  made  him  acceptable  to  trifling  company.  Others, 
however,  have  the  earmarks  of  his  humorous  spirit  in  its 
more  noteworthy  manifestations.  When  he  was  off  on 
his  military  excursion  against  the  Indians,  his  command 
had  for  its  chaplain  a  zealous  Presbyterian  minister,  Mr. 
Beatty,  who  complained  to  him  that  the  men  did  not 
generally  attend  his  prayers  and  exhortations.  When  they 
enlisted,  they  were  promised,  besides  pay  and  provisions, 
a  gill  of  rum  a  day,  which  was  punctually  served  out  to 
them,  half  in  the  morning,  and  the  other  half  in  the  evening. 

I  observ'd  [says  Franklin  in  the  Autobiography]  they  were 
as  punctual  in  attending  to  receive  it;  upon  which  I  said  to 


94        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Mr.  Beatty,  "It  is,  perhaps,  below  the  dignity  of  your  pro- 
fession to  act  as  steward  of  the  rum,  but  if  you  were  to  deal 
it  out  and  only  just  after  prayers,  you  would  have  them  all 
about  you."  He  liked  the  tho't,  undertook  the  office,  and, 
with  the  help  of  a  few  hands  to  measure  out  the  liquor,  exe- 
cuted it  to  satisfaction,  and  never  were  prayers  more  generally 
and  more  punctually  attended;  so  that  I  thought  this  method 
preferable  to  the  punishment  inflicted  by  some  military  laws 
for  non-attendance  on  divine  service. 

The  efficacy  itself  of  prayer  also  elicited  some  banter- 
ing comments  from  him.  Alluding  to  the  prayers  offered 
up  in  New  England  for  the  reduction  of  Louisburg,  he 
wrote  to  John  Franklin: 

Some  seem  to  think  forts  are  as  easy  taken  as  snuff.  Father 
Moody's  prayers  look  tolerably  modest.  You  have  a  fast 
and  prayer  day  for  that  purpose;  in  which  I  compute  five 
hundred  thousand  petitions  were  offered  up  to  the  same  effect 
in  New  England,  which  added  to  the  petitions  of  every  family 
morning  and  evening,  multiplied  by  the  number  of  days  since 
January  25th,  make  forty-five  millions  of  prayers;  which, 
set  against  the  prayers  of  a  few  priests  in  the  garrison,  to  the 
Virgin  Mary,  give  a  vast  balance  in  your  favour. 

If  you  do  not  succeed,  I  fear  I  shall  have  but  an  indifferent 
opinion  of  Presbyterian  prayers  in  such  cases,  as  long  as  I 
live.  Indeed,  in  attacking  strong  towns  I  should  have  more 
dependence  on  works,  than  on  faith;  for,  like  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  they  are  to  be  taken  by  force  and  violence;  and  in  a 
French  garrison  I  suppose  there  are  devils  of  that  kind,  that 
they  are  not  to  be  cast  out  by  prayers  and  fasting,  unless  it 
be  by  their  own  fasting  for  want  of  provisions. 

We  can  readily  imagine  that  more  than  one  mirth- 
provoking  letter  like  this  from  the  pen  of  Franklin  passed 
into  the  general  circulation  of  Colonial  humor. 

As  for  the  humorist,  he  did  not  fail  to  return  to  the 
subject  a  little  later  on,  when   Louisburg,  after  being 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  95 

bandied  about  between  English  and  French  control,  was 
again  in  the  hands  of  the  English.  "  I  congratulate  you," 
he  said  to  Jane  Mecom,  ''on  the  conquest  of  Cape  Breton, 
and  hope  as  your  people  took  it  by  praying,  the  first  time, 
you  will  now  pray  that  it  may  never  be  given  up  again, 
which  you  then  forgot." 

In  his  A  Letter  from  China,  he  makes  the  sailor,  who  is 
supposed  to  be  narrating  his  experiences  in  China,  say 
that  he  asked  his  Chinese  master  why  they  did  not  go  to 
church  to  pray,  as  was  done  in  Europe,  and  was  answered 
that  they  paid  the  priests  to  pray  for  them  that  they 
might  stay  at  home,  and  mind  their  business,  and  that 
it  would  be  a  folly  to  pay  others  for  praying,  and  then  go 
and  do  the  praying  themselves,  and  that  the  more  work 
they  did,  while  the  priests  prayed,  the  better  able  they 
were  to  pay  them  well  for  praying. 

After  expressing  his  regret  in  a  letter  from  New  York 
to  Colonel  Henry  Bouquet,  the  hero  of  the  battle  of 
Bushy  Run,  that  because  of  business  he  could  enjoy  so 
little  of  the  conversation  of  that  gallant  officer  at  Phila- 
delphia, he  exclaimed:  "How  happy  are  the  Folks  in 
Heaven,  who,  tis  said,  have  nothing  to  do,  but  to  talk  with 
one  another,  except  now  and  then  a  little  Singing  &  Drink- 
ing of  Aqua  Vitae." 

His  leniency  in  relation  to  the  Sabbath  also  vented 
itself  in  a  jocose  letter  to  Jared  Ingersoll: 

I  should  be  glad  to  know  what  it  is  that  distinguishes  Con- 
necticut religion  from  common  religion.  Communicate,  if 
you  please,  some  of  these  particulars  that  you  think  will  amuse 
me  as  a  virtuoso.  When  I  travelled  in  Flanders,  I  thought  of 
our  excessively  strict  observation  of  Sunday;  and  that  a  man 
could  hardly  travel  on  that  day  among  you  upon  his  lawful 
occasions  without  hazard  of  punishment;  while,  where  I  was, 
every  one  travelled,  if  he  pleased,  or  diverted  himself  in  any 
other  way;  and  in  the  afternoon  both  high  and  low  went  to 
the  play  or  the  opera,  where  there  was  plenty  of  singing, 


96        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

fiddling  and  dancing.  I  looked  around  for  God's  judgments, 
but  saw  no  signs  of  them.  The  cities  were  well  built  and  full 
of  inhabitants,  the  markets  filled  with  plenty,  the  people  well- 
favoured  and  well  clothed,  the  fields  well  tilled,  the  cattle 
fat  and  strong,  the  fences,  houses,  and  windows  all  in  re- 
pair, and  no  Old  Tenor  (paper  money)  anywhere  in  the 
country;  which  would  almost  make  one  suspect  that  the 
Deity  is  not  so  angry  at  that  offence  as  a  New  England 
Justice. 


The  joke  sometimes  turns  up  when  we  are  least  expect- 
ing it,  if  it  can  be  said  that  there  is  ever  a  time  when  a 
flash  of  wit  or  humor  from  Franklin  surprises  us.  In  a 
letter  to  Richard  Price,  asking  him  for  a  list  of  good  books, 
such  as  were  most  proper  to  inculcate  principles  of  sound 
religion  and  just  government,  he  informs  Price  that,  a 
new  town  in  Massachusetts  having  done  him  the  honor 
to  name  itself  after  him,  and  proposing  to  build  a  steeple 
to  their  meeting-house,  if  he  would  give  them  a  bell,  he 
had  advised  the  sparing  themselves  the  expense  of  a 
steeple  for  the  present  and  that  they  would  accept  of 
books  instead  of  a  bell;  "sense  being  preferable  to  sound." 
There  is  a  gleam  of  the  same  sort  in  his  revised  version 
of  the  Lord's  Prayer;  for,  almost  incredible  as  the  fact  is, 
his  irreverent  hand  tinkered  even  with  this  most  sacred 
of  human  petitions.  " Our  Liturgy,"  he  said,  "uses  neither 
the  Debtors  of  Matthew,  nor  the  indebted  of  Luke,  but 
instead  of  them  speaks  of  those  that  trespass  against  us. 
Perhaps  the  Considering  it  as  a  Christian  Duty  to  forgive 
Debtors,  was  by  the  Compilers  thought  an  inconvenient 
Idea  in  a  trading  Nation."  Sometimes  his  humor  is  so 
delicate  and  subtle  that  even  acute  intellects,  without  a 
keen  sense  of  the  ludicrous,  mistake  it  all  for  labored 
gravity.  This  is  true  of  his  modernized  version  of  part 
of  the  first  chapter  of  Job,  where,  for  illustration,  for 
the  words,  "But  put  forth  thine  hand  now,  and  touch 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  97 

all  that  he  hath,  and  he  will  curse  thee  to  thy  face,"  he 
suggests  the  following:  "Try  him; — only  withdraw  your 
favor,  turn  him  out  of  his  places,  and  withhold  his  pen- 
sions, and  you  will  soon  find  him  in  the  opposition."  It 
is  a  remarkable  fact  that  more  than  one  celebrated  man 
of  letters  has  accepted  this  exquisite  parody  as  a  serious 
intrusion  by  Franklin  into  a  reformatory  field  for  which 
he  was  unfitted.  We  dare  say  that,  if  Franklin  could 
have  anticipated  such  a  result,  he  would  have  experi- 
enced a  degree  of  pleasure  in  excess  of  even  that  which 
he  was  in  the  habit  of  feeling  when  he  had  successfully 
passed  off  his  Parable  against  Persecution  on  some  one 
as  an  extract  from  the  Bible. 

There  is  undeniably  a  lack  of  reality,  a  certain  sort  of 
hollowness  about  his  religious  views.  When  we  tap  them, 
a  sound,  as  of  an  empty  cask,  comes  back  to  us.  They 
are  distinguished  by  very  much  the  same  want  of  spon- 
taneous, instinctive  feeling,  the  same  artificial  cast,  the 
same  falsetto  note  as  his  system  of  moral  practice  and 
his  Art  of  Virtue.  Indeed,  to  a  very  great  degree  they 
are  but  features  of  his  system  of  morals.  That  he  ever 
gave  any  sincere  credence  to  the  written  creed  of  his  youth, 
with  its  graded  Pantheon  of  Gods,  is,  of  course,  inconceiv- 
able. This  was  a  mere  academic  and  transitional  conceit, 
inspired  by  the  first  youthful  impulses  of  his  recession 
from  extreme  irreligion  to  lukewarm  acquiescence  in 
accepted  religious  conventions.  Nor  can  we  say  that 
his  belief  in  a  single  Deity  was  much  more  genuine  or 
vital,  confidently  as  he  professed  to  commit  himself  to 
the  wisdom  and  goodness  of  this  Deity.  There  is  nothing 
in  his  writings,  full  of  well-rounded  thanksgiving  and 
praise  as  they  sometimes  are,  to  justify  the  conclusion 
that  to  him  God  was  anything  more  than  the  personifica- 
tion, more  or  less  abstract,  of  those  cosmic  forces,  with 
which  he  was  so  conversant,  and  of  those  altruistic  prompt- 
ings of  the  human  heart,  of  which  he  himself  was  such  a 

VOL.  1—7 


98         Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

beneficent  example.  The  Fatherhood  of  God  was  a 
passive  conception  to  which  his  mind  was  conducted 
almost  solely  by  his  active,  ever-present  sense  of  the 
Brotherhood  of  Man. 

But  it  is  no  greater  misconception  to  think  of  Franklin 
as  a  Christian  than  to  think  of  him  as  a  scoffer.  He  was 
no  scoffer.  A  laugh  or  a  smile  for  some  ceremonious  or 
extravagant  feature  of  religion  he  had  at  times,  as  we 
have  seen,  but  no  laugh  or  smile  except  such  as  can  be 
reconciled  with  a  substantial  measure  of  genuine  religious 
good-faith.  It  was  never  any  part  of  his  purpose  to  decry 
Religion,  to  undermine  its  influence,  or  to  weaken  its 
props.  He  was  too  full  of  the  scientific  spirit  of  specula- 
tion and  distrust,  he  was  too  practical  and  worldly-wise 
to  readily  surrender  the  right  of  private  judgment,  or  to 
give  himself  over  to  any  form  of  truly  devotional  fervor, 
but  he  had  entirely  too  keen  an  appreciation  of  the 
practical  value  of  religion  in  restraining  human  vices  and 
passions  and  promoting  human  benevolence  to  have  any 
disposition  to  "destroy  or  impair  its  sway.  The  motive 
of  his  existence  was  not  to  unsettle  men,  nor  to  cast  them 
adrift,  nor  to  hold  out  to  them  novel  projects  of  self- 
improvement,  not  rooted  in  fixed  human  prepossessions 
and  experience,  but  to  discipline  them,  to  free  them  from 
social  selfishness,  to  keep  them  in  subjection  to  all  the 
salutary  restraints,  which  the  past  had  shown  to  be  good 
for  them.  Of  these  restraints,  he  knew  that  those  im- 
posed by  Religion  were  among  the  most  potent,  and  to 
Religion,  therefore,  he  adhered,  if  for  no  other  reason, 
because  it  was  the  most  helpful  ally  of  human  morality, 
and  of  the  municipal  ordinances  by  which  human  morality 
is  enforced.  From  what  he  said  to  Lord  Karnes,  it 
seems  that  he  regarded  his  Art  of  Virtue  as  a  supplement 
to  Religion,  though  really  with  more  truth  it  might  be 
asserted  that  it  was  Religion  which  was  the  supplement 
to  his  Art  of  Virtue. 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  99 

Christians  [he  said]  are  directed  to  have  faith  in  Christ,  as 
the  effectual  means  of  obtaining  the  change  they  desire.  It 
may,  when  sufficiently  strong,  be  effectual  with  many:  for  a 
full  opinion,  that  a  Teacher  is  infinitely  wise,  good,  and  power- 
ful, and  that  he  will  certainly  reward  and  punish  the  obedient 
and  disobedient,  must  give  great  weight  to  his  precepts,  and 
make  them  much  more  attended  to  by  his  disciples.  But  many 
have  this  faith  in  so  weak  a  degree,  that  it  does  not  produce 
the  effect.  Our  Art  of  Virtue  may,  therefore,  be  of  great 
service  to  those  whose  faith  is  unhappily  not  so  strong,  and 
may  come  in  aid  of  its  weakness. 

How  little  Franklin  was  inclined  to  undervalue  Religion 
as  a  support  of  good  conduct  is,  among  other  things, 
shown  by  the  concern  which  he  occasionally  expressed  in 
his  letters,  when  he  was  abroad,  that  his  wife  and  daugh- 
ter should  not  be  slack  in  attending  divine  worship.  One 
of  his  letters  to  Sally  of  this  nature  we  have  already  quoted. 
Another  to  his  wife  expresses  the  hope  that  Sally  "con- 
tinues to  love  going  to  Church,"  and  states  that  he  would 
have  her  read  over  and  over  again  the  Whole  Duty  of 
Man  and  the  Lady's  Library.  In  another  letter  to  his 
wife,  he  says:  "You  spent  your  Sunday  very  well,  but  I 
think  you  should  go  oftner  to  Church."  Fortified  as  he 
was  by  his  Art  of  Virtue,  he  felt  that  church  attendance 
was  but  a  matter  of  secondary  importance  for  him,  but 
he  was  eager  that  his  wife  and  daughter,  who  had  not 
acquired  the  habitude  of  the  virtues  as  he  had,  should 
not  neglect  the  old  immemorial  aids  to  rectitude. 

Even  to  the  levity,  with  which  religious  topics  might 
be  handled,  he  set  distinct  limits.  He  had  no  objection 
to  a  good-humored  joke  at  the  expense  of  their  superficial 
aspects  even  if  it  was  a  little  broad,  but  with  malignant 
or  derisive  attacks  upon  religion  he  had  no  sympathy 
whatever.  In  the  Autobiography,  he  denounces  with 
manifest  sincerity,  as  a  wicked  travesty,  the  doggerel 
version  of  the  Bible,  composed  by  Dr.  Brown,  who  kept 


ioo       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

the  inn,  eight  or  ten  miles  from  Burlington,  at  which  he 
lodged  overnight,  on  his  first  journey  from  Boston  to 
Philadelphia.  Nothing  that  he  ever  wrote  is  wiser  or 
sounder  than  the  letter  which  he  addressed  to  a  friend, 
dissuading  him  from  publishing  a  "piece,"  impugning 
the  Doctrine  of  a  Special  Providence.  In  its  utilitarian 
conceptions  of  religion  and  virtue,  in  the  emphasis  placed 
by  it  upon  habit  as  the  best  security  for  righteous  conduct, 
in  the  cautious  respect  that  it  manifests  for  the  general 
sentiments  of  mankind  on  religious  subjects,  we  have  a 
concise  revelation  of  his  whole  attitude  towards  Religion, 
when  he  was  turning  his  face  seriously  towards  it. 

By  the  Argument  it  contains  against  the  Doctrines  of  a 
particular  Providence  [he  said],  tho'  you  allow  a  general 
Providence,  you  strike  at  the  Foundation  of  all  Religion.  For 
without  the  Belief  of  a  Providence,  that  takes  Cognizance  of, 
guards,  and  guides,  and  may  favour  particular  Persons,  there 
is  no  Motive  to  Worship  a  Deity,  to  fear  its  Displeasure,  or  to 
pray  for  its  Protection.  I  will  not  enter  into  any  Discussion 
of  your  Principles,  tho'  you  seem  to  desire  it.  At  present  I 
shall  only  give  you  my  Opinion,  that,  though  your  Reason- 
ings are  subtile,  and  may  prevail  with  some  Readers,  you  will 
not  succeed  so  as  to  change  the  general  Sentiments  of  Man- 
kind on  that  Subject,  and  the  Consequence  of  printing  this 
Piece  will  be,  a  great  deal  of  Odium  drawn  upon  yourself, 
Mischief  to  you,  and  no  Benefit  to  others.  He  that  spits 
against  the  Wind,  spits  in  his  own  Face. 

But,  were  you  to  succeed,  do  you  imagine  any  Good  would 
be  done  by  it?  You  yourself  may  find  it  easy  to  live  a  vir- 
tuous Life,  without  the  Assistance  afforded  by  Religion;  you 
having  a  clear  Perception  of  the  Advantages  of  Virtue,  and  the 
Disadvantages  of  Vice,  and  possessing  a  Strength  of  Resolu- 
tion sufficient  to  enable  you  to  resist  common  Temptations. 
But  think  how  great  a  Proportion  of  Mankind  consists  of  weak 
and  ignorant  Men  and  Women,  and  of  inexperienc'd,  and 
inconsiderate  Youth  of  both  Sexes,  who  have  need  of  the 
Motives  of  Religion  to  restrain  them  from  Vice,  to  support 


Franklin's  Religious  Beliefs  101 

their  Virtue,  and  retain  them  in  the  Practice  of  it  till  it  becomes 
habitual,  which  is  the  great  Point  for  its  Security.  And  per- 
haps you  are  indebted  to  her  originally,  that  is,  to  your  Reli- 
gious Education,  for  the  Habits  of  Virtue  upon  which  you 
now  justly  value  yourself.  You  might  easily  display  your 
excellent  Talents  of  reasoning  upon  a  less  hazardous  subject, 
and  thereby  obtain  a  Rank  with  our  most  distinguish 'd 
Authors.  For  among  us  it  is  not  necessary,  as  among  the 
Hottentots,  that  a  Youth,  to  be  receiv'd  into  the  Company 
of  men,  should  prove  his  Manhood  by  beating  his  Mother. 

I  would  advise  you,  therefore,  not  to  attempt  unchaining 
the  Tyger,  but  to  burn  this  Piece  before  it  is  seen  by  any 
other  Person;  whereby  you  will  save  yourself  a  great  deal  of 
Mortification  from  the  Enemies  it  may  raise  against  you,  and 
perhaps  a  good  deal  of  Regret  and  Repentence. 


CHAPTER  III 
FranKlin,  tHe  Philanthropist  and  Citizen 

IT  may  be  that,  if  Franklin  had  asked  the  angel,  who 
made  the  room  of  Abou  Ben  Adhem  rich,  and  like 
a  lily  in  bloom,  whether  his  name  was  among  the 
names  of  those  who  loved  the  Lord,  the  angel  might  have 
replied:  "Nay  not  so";  but  there  can  be  no  question  that 
like  Ben  Adhem  Franklin  could  with  good  right  have 
added, 

"I  pray  thee  then, 
Write  me  as  one  that  loves  his  fellow-men." 

As  we  have  said,  the  desire  to  promote  the  welfare  of  his 
fellow-creatures  was  the  real  religion  of  his  life — a  zealous, 
constant  religion  which  began  with  his  early  manhood  and 
ceased  only  with  his  end.  This  fact  reveals  itself  character- 
istically in  a  letter  written  by  him  to  his  wife  just  after 
he  had  narrowly  escaped  shipwreck  off  Falmouth  Harbor 
on  his  second  voyage  to  England.  "Were  I  a  Roman 
Catholic,"  he  said,  "perhaps  I  should  on  this  occasion 
vow  to  build  a  chapel  to  some  saint;  but  as  I  am  not,  if 
I  were  to  vow  at  all,  it  should  be  to  build  a  light  house." 

The  weaker  side  of  human  character  was,  in  all  its 
aspects,  manifest  enough  to  his  humorous  perceptions. 
In  an  amusing  paragraph  in  the  Autobiography,  he  tells 
us  how  once  in  his  youth  he  irresolutely  adhered  to  his 

102 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    103 

vegetarian  scruples,  even  when  his  nose  was  filled  with 
the  sweet  savor  of  frying  fish,  until  he  recollected  that  he 
had  seen  some  smaller  fish  removed  from  their  stomachs. 
Then  thought  he,  "If  you  eat  one  another,  I  don't  see 
why  we  mayn't  eat  you."  "So  convenient  a  thing,"  he 
adds,  "it  is  to  be  a  reasonable  creature,  since  it  enables  one 
to  find  or  make  a  reason  for  everything  one  has  a  mind 
to  do."  On  another  occasion,  he  was  so  disgusted  with 
the  workings  of  human  reason  as  to  regret  that  we  had 
not  been  furnished  with  a  sound,  sensible  instinct  instead. 
At  intervals,  the  sly  humor  dies  away  into  something  like 
real,  heartfelt  censure  of  his  kind,  especially  when  he 
reflects  upon  the  baleful  state  of  eclipse  into  which  human 
happiness  passes  when  overcast  by  war.  Among  other 
reasons,  he  hated  war,  because  he  deprecated  everything 
that  tended  to  check  the  multiplication  of  the  human 
species  which  he  was  almost  ludicrously  eager  to  encour- 
age. No  writer,  not  even  Malthus,  who  was  very  deeply 
indebted  to  him,  has  ever  had  a  keener  insight  into  the 
philosophy  of  population,  and  no  man  has  ever  been  a 
more  enthusiastic  advocate  of  the  social  arrangements 
which  furnish  the  results  for  the  application  of  this 
philosophy.  In  one  of  her  letters  to  him,  we  find  his 
daughter,  Sally,  saying:  "As  I  know  my  dear  Papa  likes 
to  hear  of  weddings,  I  will  give  him  a  list  of  my  acquain- 
tance that  has  entered  the  matrimonial  state  since  his 
departure."  And  in  one  of  his  letters  to  his  wife,  when 
he  was  in  England  on  his  first  mission,  he  wrote:  "The 
Accounts  you  give  me  of  the  Marriages  of  our  friends  are 
very  agreeable.  I  love  to  hear  of  everything  that  tends 
to  increase  the  Number  of  good   People."1    The  one 

1  In  his  Plan  for  Settling  Two  Western  Colonies  in  North  America, 
Franklin  says  ruefully  that,  if  the  English  did  not  flow  westwardly  into 
the  great  country  back  of  the  Appalachian  Mountains  on  both  sides  of  the 
Ohio,  and  between  that  river  and  the  Lakes,  which  would  undoubtedly 
(perhaps  in  less  than  another  century)  become  a  populous  and  powerful 
dominion,  and  a  great  accession  of  power  either  to  England  or  France, 


104       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

thing  in  French  customs  that  appears  to  have  met  with 
his  disapproval  was  the  inclination  of  French  mothers  to 
escape  the  burdens  of  maternity.  In  a  letter  to  George 
Whatley,  he  ventured  the  conjecture  that  in  the  year 
1785  only  one  out  of  every  two  infants  born  in  Paris  was 
being  nursed  by  its  own  mother. 

Is  it  right  [he  asked]  to  encourage  this  monstrous  Deficiency 
of  natural  Affection?  A  Surgeon  I  met  with  here  excused 
the  Women  of  Paris,  by  saying,  seriously,  that  they  could  not 
give  suck;  "  Car"  dit  il,  u  Riles  rCont  point  de  tetons."  ("  For," 
said  he,  "They  have  no  teats.")  He  assur'd  me  it  was  a  Fact, 
and  bade  me  look  at  them,  and  observe  how  flat  they  were  on 
the  Breast;  "they  have  nothing  more  there,"  said  he,  "than 
I  have  upon  the  Back  of  my  hand."  I  have  since  thought 
that  there  might  be  some  Truth  in  his  Observation,  and  that, 
possibly,  Nature,  finding  they  made  no  use  of  Bubbies,  has 
left  off  giving  them  any.  I  wish  Success  to  the  new  Project 
of  assisting  the  Poor  to  keep  their  Children  at  home  [Franklin 
adds  later  in  this  letter]  because  I  think  there  is  no  Nurse  like 
a  Mother  (or  not  many),  and  that,  if  Parents  did  not  immedi- 
ately send  their  Infants  out  of  their  Sight,  they  would  in  a 
few  days  begin  to  love  them,  and  thence  be  spurr'd  to  greater 
Industry  for  their  Maintenance. 

Among  his  most  delightful  observations  are  these  on 
marriage  in  a  letter  to  John  Sargent : 

The  Account  you  give  me  of  your  Family  is  pleasing,  except 
that  your  eldest  Son  continues  so  long  unmarried.  I  hope 
he  does  not  intend  to  live  and  die  in  Celibacy.  The  Wheel 
of  Life,  that  has  roll'd  down  to  him  from  Adam  without  Inter- 
ruption, should  not  stop  with  him.  I  would  not  have  one 
dead  unhealing  Branch  in  the  Genealogical  Tree  of  the  Sar- 
gents.     The  married  State  is,  after  all  our  Jokes,  the  happiest, 

the  French,  with  the  aid  of  the  Indians,  would,  by  cutting  off  new  means 
of  subsistence,  discourage  marriages  among  the  English,  and  keep  them 
from  increasing;  thus  (if  the  expression  might  be  allowed)  killing  thousands 
of  their  children  before  they  were  born. 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    105 

being  conformable  to  our  natures.  Man  &  Woman  have 
each  of  them  Qualities  &  Tempers,  in  which  the  other  is  de- 
ficient, and  which  in  Union  contribute  to  the  common  Feli- 
city. Single  and  separate,  they  are  not  the  compleat  human 
Being;  they  are  like  the  odd  Halves  of  Scissors;  they  cannot 
answer  the  End  of  their  Formation. 

Equally  delightful  are  his  observations  upon  the  same 
subject  in  a  letter  to  John  Alleyne  after  Alleyne's  marriage : 

Had  you  consulted  me,  as  a  Friend,  on  the  Occasion,  Youth 
on  both  sides  I  should  not  have  thought  any  Objection.  In- 
deed, from  the  matches  that  have  fallen  under  my  Observa- 
tion, I  am  rather  inclin'd  to  think,  that  early  ones  stand  the 
best  Chance  for  Happiness.  The  Tempers  and  habits  of 
young  People  are  not  yet  become  so  stiff  and  uncomplying, 
as  when  more  advanced  in  Life;  they  form  more  easily  to  each 
other,  and  hence  many  Occasions  of  Disgust  are  removed. 
And  if  Youth  has  less  of  that  Prudence,  that  is  necessary  to 
conduct  a  Family,  yet  the  Parents  and  elder  Friends  of  young 
married  Persons  are  generally  at  hand  to  afford  their  Advice, 
which  amply  supplies  that  Defect;  and,  by  early  Marriage, 
Youth  is  sooner  form'd  to  regular  and  useful  Life;  and  possibly 
some  of  those  Accidents,  Habits  or  Connections,  that  might 
have  injured  either  the  Constitution,  or  the  Reputation,  or 
both,  are  thereby  happily  prevented. 

Particular  Circumstances  of  particular  Persons  may  pos- 
sibly some-times  make  it  prudent  to  delay  entering  into  that 
State;  but  in  general,  when  Nature  has  render'd  our  Bodies 
fit  for  it,  the  Presumption  is  in  Nature's  Favour,  that  she 
has  not  judg'd  amiss  in  making  us  desire  it.  Late  Marriages 
are  often  attended,  too,  with  this  further  Inconvenience, 
that  there  is  not  the  same  Chance  the  parents  shall  live  to 
see  their  offspring  educated.  "Late  Children,1*  says  the  Span- 
ish Proverb,  "are  early  Orphans."  A  melancholy  Reflection 
to  those,  whose  Case  it  may  be!  With  us  in  America,  Mar- 
riages are  generally  in  the  Morning  of  Life;  our  Children  are 
therefore  educated  and  settled  in  the  World  by  Noon,  and 
thus,  our  Business  being  done,  we  have  an  Afternoon  and 


106       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Evening  of  chearful  Leisure  to  ourselves;  such  as  your  Friend 
at  present  enjoys.  By  these  early  Marriages  we  are  blest 
with  more  Children;  and  from  the  Mode  among  us,  founded 
in  Nature,  of  every  Mother  suckling  and  nursing  her  own 
Child,  more  of  them  are  raised.  Thence  the  swift  Progress 
of  Population  among  us,  unparallel'd  in  Europe. 

Then,  after  speaking  of  the  fate  of  many  in  England 
who,  having  deferred  marriage  too  long,  find  at  length 
that  it  is  too  late  to  think  of  it,  and  so  live  all  their  lives 
in  a  situation  that  greatly  lessens  a  man's  value,  he  comes 
back  to  what  seems  to  have  been  a  favorite  course  of 
illustration  of  his  in  relation  to  marriage.  "An  odd 
Volume  of  a  Set  of  Books  you  know  is  not  worth  its  pro- 
portion of  the  Set,  and  what  think  you  of  the  Usefulness 
of  an  odd  Half  of  a  Pair  of  Scissors?  It  can  not  well  cut 
anything.  It  may  possibly  serve  to  scrape  a  Trencher." 
With  these  views  about  marriage,  it  is  not  surprising 
to  find  Franklin  employing  in  a  letter  to  Joseph  Priestley 
such  language  about  war  as  this: 

Men  I  find  to  be  a  Sort  of  Beings  very  badly  constructed, 
as  they  are  generally  more  easily  provok'd  than  reconcil'd, 
more  disposed  to  do  Mischief  to  each  other  than  to  make 
Reparation,  much  more  easily  deceiv'd  than  undeceiv'd,  and 
having  more  Pride  and  even  Pleasure  in  killing  than  in  beget- 
ting one  another;  for  without  a  Blush  they  assemble  in  great 
armies  at  Noon-Day  to  destroy,  and  when  they  have  kill'd 
as  many  as  they  can,  they  exaggerate  the  Number  to  augment 
the  fancied  Glory;  but  they  creep  into  Corners,  or  cover  them- 
selves with  the  Darkness  of  night,  when  they  mean  to  beget, 
as  being  asham'd  of  a  virtuous  Action.  A  virtuous"  Action  it 
would  be,  and  a  vicious  one  the  killing  of  them,  if  the  Species 
were  really  worth  producing  or  preserving;  but  of  this  I  begin 
to  doubt. 

In  the  same  letter,  he  suggests  to  the  celebrated  clergy- 
man and  philosopher  to  whom  he  was  writing  that  per- 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    107 

haps  as  the  latter  grew  older  he  might  look  upon  the 
saving  of  souls  as  a  hopeless  project  or  an  idle  amusement, 
repent  of  having  murdered  in  mephitic  air  so  many  honest, 
harmless  mice,  and  wish  that  to  prevent  mischief  he  had 
used  boys  and  girls  instead  of  them. I 

Nor  are  these  by  any  means  the  only  sentences  in 
Franklin's  writings  in  which  he  expressed  his  disgust  for 
the  human  passions  which  breed  war.  A  frequently 
repeated  saying  of  his  was  that  there  hardly  ever  existed 
such  a  thing  as  a  bad  peace  or  a  good  war.  "All  Wars," 
he  declared  to  Mrs.  Mary  Hewson,  after  the  establish- 
ment of  peace  between  Great  Britain  and  her  revolted 
colonies,  "are  Follies,  very  expensive,  and  very  mischie- 
vous ones.  When  will  Mankind  be  convinced  of  this, 
and  agree  to  settle  their  Differences  by  Arbitration  ? 
Were  they  to  do  it,  even  by  the  Cast  of  a  Dye,  it  would 
be  better  than  by  Fighting  and  destroying  each  other." 

I  join  with  you  most  cordially  [he  wrote  six  months  later  to 
Sir  Joseph  Banks]  in  rejoicing  at  the  return  of  Peace.  I  hope 
it  will  be  lasting,  and  that  Mankind  will  at  length,  as  they 
call  themselves  reasonable  Creatures,  have  Reason  and  Sense 
enough  to  settle  their  Differences  without  cutting  Throats; 
for,  in  my  opinion,  fthere  never  was  a  good  War,  or  a  bad  Peace. 
What  vast  additions  to  the  Conveniences  and  Comforts  of 

1  The  existence  of  so  much  evil  and  misery  in  the  world  was  a  stumbling- 
block  to  Franklin  as  it  has  been  to  so  many  other  human  beings.  In  a 
letter  to  Jane  Mecom,  dated  Dec.  39,  1770,  he  told  her  that  he  had  known 
in  London  some  forty-five  years  before  a  printer's  widow,  named  Hive, 
who  had  required  her  son  by  her  will  to  deliver  publicly  in  Salter's  Hall 
a  solemn  discourse  in  support  of  the  proposition  that  this  world  is  the  true 
Hell,  or  place  of  punishment  for  the  spirits  who  have  transgressed  in  a 
better  place  and  are  sent  here  to  suffer  for  their  sins  as  animals  of  all  sorts. 
"In  fact,"  Franklin  continued,  "we  see  here,  that  every  lower  animal 
has  its  enemy,  with  proper  inclinations,  faculties,  and  weapons,  to  terrify, 
wound,  and  destroy  it;  and  that  men,  who  are  uppermost,  are  devils  to 
one  another;  so  that,  on  the  established  doctrine  of  the  goodness  and  justice 
of  the  great  Creator,  this  apparent  state  of  general  and  systematical  mis- 
chief seemed  to  demand  some  such  supposition  as  Mrs.  Hive's,  to  account 
for  it  consistently  with  the  honour  of  the  Deity." 


108       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Living  might  Mankind  have  acquired,  if  the  Money  spent  in 
Wars  had  been  employed  in  Works  of  public  utility!  What 
an  extension  of  Agriculture,  even  to  the  Tops  of  our  Moun- 
tains: what  Rivers  rendered  navigable,  or  joined  by  Canals: 
what  Bridges,  Aqueducts,  new  Roads,  and  other  public  Works, 
Edifices,  and  Improvements,  rendering  England  a  compleat 
Paradise,  might  have  been  obtained  by  spending  those  Mil- 
lions in  doing  good,  which  in  the  last  War  have  been  spent  in 
doing  Mischief;  in  bringing  Misery  into  thousands  of  Families, 
and  destroying  the  Lives  of  so  many  thousands  of  working 
people,  who  might  have  performed  the  useful  labor! 

The  same  sentiments  are  repeated  in  a  letter  to  David 
Hartley: 

What  would  you  think  of  a  proposition,  if  I  sh'd  make  it, 
of  a  family  compact  between  England,  France  and  America? 
America  wd  be  as  happy  as  the  Sabine  Girls,  if  she  cd  be  the 
means  of  uniting  in  perpetual  peace  her  father  and  her  hus- 
band. What  repeated  follies  are  these  repeated  wars!  You 
do  not  want  to  conquer  &  govern  one  another.  Why  then 
sh'd  you  continually  be  employed  in  injuring  &  destroying  one 
another?  How  many  excellent  things  might  have  been  done 
to  promote  the  internal  welfare  of  each  country;  What  Bridges, 
roads,  canals  and  other  usefull  public  Works  &  institutions, 
tending  to  the  common  felicity,  might  have  been  made  and 
established  with  the  money  and  men  foolishly  spent  during 
the  last  seven  centuries  by  our  mad  wars  in  doing  one  another 
mischief!  You  are  near  neighbors,  and  each  have  very  re- 
spectable qualities.  Learn  to  be  quiet  and  to  respect  each 
other's  rights.  You  are  all  Christians.  One  is  The  Most 
Christian  King,  and  the  other  Defender  of  the  Faith.  Manifest 
the  propriety  of  these  titles  by  your  future  conduct.  "By 
this,"  says  Christ,  "shall  all  men  know  that  ye  are  my  Disciples, 
if  ye  love  one  another."     "Seek  peace,  and  ensue  it." 

We  make  daily  great  Improvements  in  Natural,  there  is 
one  I  wish  to  see  in  Moral  Philosophy  [he  wrote  to  Richard 
Price]  the  Discovery  of  a  Plan,  that  would  induce  &  oblige 
Nations  to  settle  their  Disputes  without  first  Cutting  one 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    109 

another's  Throats.     When  will  human  Reason  be  sufficiently 
improv'd  to  see  the  Advantage  of  this! 

The  aspiration  is  again  voiced  in  a  letter  to  Joseph 
Priestley : 

The  rapid  Progress  true  Science  now  makes,  occasions  my 
regretting  sometimes  that  I  was  born  so  soon.  It  is  impossible 
to  imagine  the  Height  to  which  may  be  carried,  in  a  thousand 
years,  the  Power  of  Man  over  Matter.  We  may  perhaps 
learn  to  deprive  large  Masses  of  their  Gravity,  and  give  them 
absolute  Levity,  for  the  sake  of  easy  Transport.  Agriculture 
may  diminish  its  Labour  and  double  its  Produce;  all  Diseases 
may  by  sure  means  be  prevented  or  cured,  not  excepting  even 
that  of  Old  Age,  and  our  Lives  lengthened  at  pleasure  even 
beyond  the  antediluvian  Standard.  O  that  moral  Science 
were  in  as  fair  a  way  of  Improvement,  that  Men  would  cease 
to  be  Wolves  to  one  another,  and  that  human  Beings  would 
at  length  learn  what  they  now  improperly  call  Humanity ! 

Mixed  with  Franklin's  other  feelings  about  war,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  a  profound  sense  of  its  pecuniary  waste- 
fulness. It  was  the  greediest  of  all  rat-holes,  an  agency 
of  impoverishment  worse  even  than  the  four  specified  in 
Poor  Richard's  couplet, 

"Women  and  Wine,  Game  and  Deceit, 
Make  the  Wealth  small  and  the  Wants  great." 

When  [he  asked  Benjamin  Vaughan]  will  princes  learn 
arithmetic  enough  to  calculate,  if  they  want  pieces  of  one 
another's  territory,  how  much  cheaper  it  would  be  to  buy 
them,  than  to  make  war  for  them,  even  though  they  were  to 
give  a  hundred  year's  purchase?  But,  if  glory  cannot  be 
valued,  and  therefore  the  wars  for  it  cannot  be  subject  to 
arithmetical  calculation  so  as  to  show  their  advantage  or  dis- 
advantage, at  least  wars  for  trade,  which  have  gain  for  their 
object,  may  be  proper  subjects  for  such  computation;  and  a 
trading  nation,  as  well  as  a  single  trader,  ought  to  calculate 
the  probabilities  of  profit  and   loss,  before   engaging  in  any 


no       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

considerable  adventure.  This  however  nations  seldom  do, 
and  we  have  had  frequent  instances  of  their  spending  more 
money  in  wars  for  acquiring  or  securing  branches  of  commerce, 
than  a  hundred  763x3'  profit  or  the  full  enjoyment  of  them 
can  compensate. 


A  celebrated  philosophical  writer,  Franklin  said  in 
the  Propositions  Relative  to  Privateering,  which  he  com- 
municated to  Richard  Oswald,  had  remarked  that,  when 
he  considered  the  destruction  to  human  life,  caused  by 
the  slave  trade,  so  intimately  connected  with  the  in- 
dustry of  the  sugar  islands,  he  could  scarce  look  on  a  morsel 
of  sugar  without  conceiving  it  spotted  with  human  blood. 
If  this  writer,  Franklin  added,  had  considered  also  the 
blood  of  one  another  which  the  white  nations  had  shed 
in  fighting  for  these  islands,  "he  would  have  imagined 
his  sugar  not  as  spotted  only,  but  as  thoroughly  dyed 
red."  As  for  Franklin  himself,  he  was  satisfied  that  the 
subjects  of  the  Emperor  of  Germany  and  the  Empress  of 
Russia,  who  had  no  sugar  islands,  consumed  sugar  cheaper 
at  Vienna  and  Moscow,  with  all  the  charge  of  transporting 
it  after  its  arrival  in  Europe,  than  the  citizens  of  London 
or  of  Paris.  "And  I  sincerely  believe,"  he  declared, 
"that  if  France  and  England  were  to  decide,  by  throwing 
dice,  which  should  have  the  whole  of  their  sugar  islands, 
the  loser  in  the  throw  would  be  the  gainer."  The  future 
expense  of  defending  the  islands  would  be  saved,  the 
sugar  would  be  bought  cheaper  by  all  Europe,  if  the  in- 
habitants of  the  islands  might  make  it  without  interrup- 
tion, and,  whoever  imported  it,  the  same  revenue  might 
be  raised  by  duties  on  it  at  the  custom  houses  of  the  na- 
tion that  consumed  it.  "You  know,"  Franklin  observed 
in  his  famous  letter  to  his  daughter  Sally  on  the  Order 
of  the  Cincinnati,  "everything  makes  me  recollect  some 
Story."  As  respects  war,  the  inevitable  story  turned  up 
in  one  of  his  letters  to  Priestley : 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    in 

In  what  Light  [he  said]  we  are  viewed  by  superior  Beings, 
may  be  gathered  from  a  Piece  of  late  West  India  News,  which 
possibly  has  not  yet  reached  you.  A  young  Angel  of  Distinc- 
tion being  sent  down  to  this  world  on  some  Business,  for  the 
first  time,  had  an  old  courier-spirit  assigned  him  as  a  Guide. 
They  arriv'd  over  the  Seas  of  Martinico,  in  the  middle  of  the 
long  Day  of  obstinate  Fight  between  the  Fleets  of  Rodney 
and  De  Grasse.  When,  thro'  the  Clouds  of  smoke,  he  saw  the 
Fire  of  the  Guns,  the  Decks  covered  with  mangled  Limbs,  and 
Bodies  dead  or  dying;  the  ships  sinking,  burning,  or  blown  into 
the  Air;  and  the  Quantity  of  Pain,  Misery,  and  Destruction, 
the  Crews  yet  alive  were  thus  with  so  much  Eagerness  dealing 
round  to  one  another;  he  turn'd  angrily  to  his  Guide,  and  said: 
"You  blundering  Blockhead,  you  are  ignorant  of  your  Busi- 
ness; you  undertook  to  conduct  me  to  the  Earth,  and  you 
have  brought  me  into  Hell!"  "No,  sir,"  says  the  Guide, 
"I  have  made  no  mistake;  this  is  really  the  Earth,  and  these 
are  men.  Devils  never  treat  one  another  in  this  cruel  manner; 
they  have  more  Sense,  and  more  of  what  Men  (vainly)  call 
Humanity." 

But  how  little  acrid  misanthropy  there  was  in  this 
lurid  story  or  in  any  of  the  indignant  utterances  occasion- 
ally wrung  from  Franklin  by  the  sanguinary  tendencies 
of  the  human  race  is  clearly  seen  in  this  very  letter;  for, 
after  working  up  his  story  to  its  opprobrious  climax,  he 
falls  back  to  the  genial  level  of  his  ordinary  disposition: 

But  to  be  serious,  my  dear  old  Friend  [he  adds],  I  love  you 
as  much  as  ever,  and  I  love  all  the  honest  Souls  that  meet 
at  the  London  Coffee-House.  I  only  wonder  how  it  happen'd 
that  they  and  my  other  Friends  in  England  came  to  be  such 
good  Creatures  in  the  midst  of  so  perverse  a  Generation.  I 
long  to  see  them  and  you  once  more,  and  I  labour  for  Peace 
with  more  Earnestness,  that  I  may  again  be  happy  in  your 
sweet  society. 

The  truth  is  that  Franklin  was  no  Timon  of  Athens, 
and  no  such  thing  as  lasting  misanthropy  could  find 


ii2       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

lodgment  in  that  earth-born  and  earth-loving  nature 
which  fitted  into  the  world  "as  smoothly  as  its  own  grass, 
its  running  water,  or  its  fruitful  plains.  If  for  many 
generations  there  has  been  any  man,  whose  pronounce- 
ment, Homo  sum;  humani  nihil  a  me  alienum  puto,  was 
capable  of  clothing  that  trite  phrase  with  its  original  fresh- 
ness, this  man  was  Franklin.  The  day,  when  the  word 
went  out  in  the  humble  Milk  Street  dwelling  of  his  father 
that  another  man  child  was  born,  was  a  day  that'  he  never 
regretted;  the  long  years  of  rational  and  useful  existence 
which  followed  he  was  willing,  as  has  been  told,  to  live 
all  over  again,  if  he  could  only  enjoy  the  author's  privi- 
lege of  correcting  in  the  second  edition  the  errata  of  the 
first;  in  his  declining  years  he  could  still  find  satisfaction 
in  the  fact  that  he  was  afflicted  with  only  three  mortal 
diseases;  and  during  his  last  twelve  months,  when  he  was 
confined  for  the  most  part  to  his  bed,  and,  in  his  paroxysms 
of  pain,  was  obliged  to  take  large  doses  of  laudanum  to 
mitigate  his  tortures,  his  fortitude  was  such  as  to  elicit 
this  striking  tribute  from  his  physician,  Dr.  John  Jones: 

In  the  intervals  of  pain,  he  not  only  amused  himself  with 
reading  and  conversing  cheerfully  with  his  family,  and  a  few 
friends  who  visited  him,  but  was  often  employed  in  doing  busi- 
ness of  a  public  as  well  as  private  nature,  with  various  persons 
who  waited  on  him  for  that  purpose;  and,  in  every  instance 
displayed,  not  only  that  readiness  and  disposition  of  doing 
good,  which  was  the  distinguishing  characteristic  of  his  life, 
but  the  fullest  and  clearest  possession  of  his  uncommon  mental 
abilities;  and  not  unfrequently  indulged  himself  in  those 
jeux  d'esprit  and  entertaining  anecdotes,  which  were  the 
delight  of  all  who  heard  him. 

To  the  very  last  his  wholesome,  sunny  spirit  was  proof 
against  every  morbid  trial.  Dr.  Jones  tells  us  further 
that,  even  during  his  closing  days,  when  the  severity  of 
his  pain  drew  forth  a  groan  of  complaint,  he  would  observe 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    113 

that  he  was  afraid  that  he  did  not  bear  his  sufferings  as 
he  ought,  acknowledged  his  grateful  sense  of  the  many- 
blessings  he  had  received  from  that  Supreme  Being  who 
had  raised  him  from  small  and  low  beginnings  to  such 
high  rank  and  consideration  among  men,  and  made  no 
doubt  but  his  present  afflictions  were  kindly  intended  to 
wean  him  from  a  world,  in  which  he  was  no  longer  fit  to 
act  the  part  assigned  to  him. 

It  is  plain  enough  that  in  practice  as  well  as  in  precept 
to  Franklin  life  was  ever  a  welcome  gift  to  be  enjoyed  so 
long  as  corporeal  infirmities  permit  it  to  be  enjoyed,  and 
to  be  surrendered,  when  the  ends  of  its  institution  can 
no  longer  be  fulfilled,  as  naturally  as  we  surrender  con- 
sciousness when  we  turn  into  our  warmer  beds  and  give 
ourselves  over  to  our  shorter  slumbers.  The  spirit  in 
which  he  lived  is  reflected  in  the  concluding  paragraph 
of  his  Articles  of  Belief  in  which,  with  the  refrain,  "Good 
God,  I  thank  thee!"  at  the  end  of  every  paragraph  except 
the  last,  and,  with  the  words,  "My  Good  God,  I  thank 
thee!"  at  the  end  of  the  last,  he  expresses  his  gratitude  to 
this  God  for  peace  and  liberty,  for  food  and  raiment,  for 
corn  and  wine  and  milk  and  every  kind  of  healthful 
nourishment,  for  the  common  benefits  of  air  and  light, 
for  useful  fire  and  delicious  water,  for  knowledge  and 
literature  and  every  useful  art,  for  his  friends  and  their 
prosperity,  and  for  the  fewness  of  his  enemies,  for  all  the 
innumerable  benefits  conferred  on  him  by  the  Deity,  for 
life  and  reason  and  the  use  of  speech,  for  health  and  joy 
and  every  pleasant  hour.  Those  thanks  for  his  friends 
and  their  prosperity  was  Franklin  indeed  at  his  best.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  spirit  in  which  he  regarded  and  met 
the  hour  of  his  dissolution  is  vividly  reflected  in  the  lines 
written  by  him  in  his  seventy-ninth  year: 

"If  Life's  compared  to  a  Feast, 

Near  Fourscore  Years  I've  been  a  Guest; 

VOL.  1—8 


ii4      Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

I've  been  regaled  with  the  best, 

And  feel  quite  satisfyd. 

'Tis  time  that  I  retire  to  Rest; 

Landlord,  I  thank  ye! — Friends,  Good  Night." 

These  lines,  unsteady  upon  their  poetic  feet  as  they  are 
like  all  of  Franklin's  lines,  may  perhaps  be  pronounced 
the  best  that  he  ever  wrote,  but  they  are  not  so  good  as 
his  celebrated  epitaph  written  many  years  before  when 
the  hour  at  the  inn  of  existence  was  not  so  late: 

1  'The  Body 

of 

Benjamin  Franklin 

Printer, 

(Like  the  cover  of  an  old  book, 

Its  contents  torn  out, 

And  stript  of  its  lettering  and  gilding,) 

Lies  here,  food  for  worms. 

Yet  the  work  itself  shall  not  be  lost, 

For  it  will,  as  he  believed,  appear  once  more, 

In  a  new 

And  more  beautiful  edition, 

Corrected  and  amended 

By 

The  Author." 

So  far  as  we  can  see,  the  only  quarrel  that  Franklin 
had  with  existence  was  that  he  was  born  too  soon  to  wit- 
ness many  important  human  achievements,  which  the 
future  had  in  store.  He  was  prepared  to  quit  the  world 
quietly  when  he  was  duly  summoned  to  do  so.  The  artist 
who  was  to  paint  his  portrait  for  Yale  College,  he  said 
a  few   days  before  his  death  to  Ezra  Stiles,  must  not 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    115 

delay  about  it,  as  his  subject  might  slip  through  his  fingers; 
but  it  was  impossible  for  such  an  inquisitive  man  to  re- 
press the  wish  that,  after  his  decease,  he  might  be  per- 
mitted to  revisit  the  globe  for  the  purpose  of  enjoying  the 
inventions  and  improvements  which  had  come  into  exist- 
ence during  his  absence:  the  locomotive,  the  steamship, 
the  Morse  and  Marconi  telegraphs,  the  telephone,  the 
autocar,  the  aeroplane,  the  abolition  of  American  slavery, 
Twentieth  Century  London,  Paris  and  New  York. 

I  have  been  long  impressed  [he  said  in  his  eighty-third  year 
to  the  Rev.  John  Lathrop]  with  the  same  sentiments  you  so 
well  express,  of  the  growing  felicity  of  mankind,  from  the 
improvements  in  philosophy,  morals,  politics,  and  even  the 
conveniences  of  common  living,  by  the  invention  and  acquisi- 
tion of  new  and  useful  utensils  and  instruments,  that  I  have 
sometimes  almost  wished  it  had  been  my  destiny  to  be  born 
two  or  three  centuries  hence.  For  invention  and  improve- 
ment are  prolific,  and  beget  more  of  their  kind.  The  present 
progress  is  rapid.  Many  of  great  importance,  now  unthought 
of,  will  before  that  period  be  produced;  and  then  I  might  not 
only  enjoy  their  advantages,  but  have  my  curiosity  gratified 
in  knowing  what  they  are  to  be.  I  see  a  little  absurdity  in 
what  I  have  just  written,  but  it  is  to  a  friend,  who  will  wink 
and  let  it  pass,  while  I  mention  one  reason  more  for  such  a 
wish,  which  is,  that,  if  the  art  of  physic  shall  be  improved  in 
proportion  with  other  arts,  we  may  then  be  able  to  avoid 
diseases,  and  live  as  long  as  the  patriarchs  in  Genesis;  to  which 
I  suppose  we  should  make  little  objection. 

Such  complete  adjustment  to  all  the  conditions  of 
human  existence,  even  the  harshest,  as  Franklin  exhibited, 
would,  under  any  circumstances,  be  an  admirable  and 
inspiring  thing;  but  it  becomes  still  more  so  when  we 
recollect  that  he  prized  life  mainly  for  the  opportunity 
that  it  afforded  him  to  do  good.  To  his  own  country  he 
rendered  services  of  priceless  importance,  but  it  would  be 
utterly  misleading  to  think  of  him  as  anything  less — to 


n6       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

use  a  much  abused  term  of  his  time — than  a  Friend  of 
Man. 

"II  est  .  .  . 

Surtout  pour  sa  philanthropic, 

L'honneur  de  l'Amenque,  et  de  rhumaniteY' 

That  was  what  one  of  his  French  eulogists  sang,  and  that 
is  what  his  contemporaries  generally  felt,  about  him,  and 
said  of  him  with  a  thousand  and  one  different  variations. 
It  was  the  general  belief  of  his  age  that  his  enlightened 
intelligence  and  breadth  of  charity  placed  him  upon  a 
plateau  from  which  his  vision  ranged  over  the  wants,  the 
struggles  and  the  aberrations  of  his  fellow  beings  every- 
where, altogether  unrefracted  by  self-interest  or  national 
prejudices.  He  might  have  scores  to  settle  with  Princes, 
Ministers,  Parliaments  or  Priests,  but  for  the  race  he  had 
nothing  but  light  and  love  and  compassion.  To  the  poor 
he  was  the  strong,  shrewd,  wise  man  who  had  broken 
through  the  hard  incrustations  of  his  own  poverty,  and 
preached  sound  counsels  of  prudence  and  thrift  as  general 
in  their  application  as  the  existence  of  human  indigence 
and  folly.  To  the  liberal  aspirations  of  his  century,  he 
represented,  to  use  his  own  figure,  the  light  which  all  the 
window-shutters  of  despotism  and  priest-craft  were 
powerless  to  shut  out  longer.  To  men  of  all  kinds  his 
benevolent  interest  in  so  many  different  forms  in  the 
welfare  and  progress  of  human  society,  his  efforts  to 
assuage  the  ferocity  of  war,  the  very  rod,  with  which  he 
disarmed  the  fury  of  the  storm-cloud,  seemed  to  mark  him 
as  a  benignant  being,  widely  removed  by  his  sagacity  and 
goodness  from  the  short-sighted  and  selfish  princes  and 
statesmen  of  his  day  whose  thoughts  and  aims  appeared  to 
be  wholly  centred  upon  intrigue  and  blood. 

It  was  in  perfect  sincerity  that  Edmund  Burke  appealed 
to  Franklin  not  only  as  a  friend  but  as  the  "lover  of  his 
species"  to  assist  him  in  protecting  the  parole  of  General 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    117 

Burgoyne.  How  well  he  knew  the  man  may  be  inferred 
from  his  declaration,  when  it  was  suggested  that  selfish 
considerations  of  personal  safety  had  brought  Franklin  to 
France.  "I  never  can  believe,"  he  said,  "that  he  is  come 
thither  as  a  fugitive  from  his  cause  in  the  hour  of  its 
distress,  or  that  he  is  going  to  conclude  a  long  life,  which 
has  brightened  every  hour  it  has  continued,  with  so  foul 
and  dishonorable  flight.* ' 

If  Franklin  is  not  mistaken,  his  career  as  a  lover  of  his 
species  can  be  traced  back  to  a  very  early  circumstance. 
In  one  of  his  letters,  in  his  old  age,  to  Samuel  Mather,  the 
descendant  of  Increase  and  Cotton  Mather,  he  states  that 
a  mutilated  copy  of  Cotton  Mather's  Essays  to  do  Good, 
which  fell  in  his  way  when  he  was  a  boy,  had  influenced 
his  conduct  through  life,  and  that,  if  he  had  been  a  useful 
citizen,  the  public  was  indebted  for  the  fact  to  this  book. 
"I  have  always  set  a  greater  value  on  the  character  of  a 
doer  of  good,  than  on  any  other  kind  of  reputation, "  he 
remarks  in  the  letter.  "The  noblest  question  in  the 
world, "  said  Poor  Richard,  "is  what  good  may  I  do  in  it.  M 
But,  no  matter  how  or  when  the  chance  seed  was  sown,  it 
fell  upon  ground  eager  to  receive  it.  It  was  an  observa- 
tion of  Franklin  that  the  quantity  of  good  that  may  be 
done  by  one  man,  if  he  will  make  a  business  of  doing  good, 
is  prodigious.  The  saying  in  its  various  forms  pre- 
supposed the  sacrifice  of  all  studies,  amusements  and 
avocations.  No  such  self-immolation,  it  is  needless  to 
affirm,  marked  his  versatile  and  happy  career,  yet  rarely 
has  any  single  person,  whose  attention  has  been  engaged 
by  other  urgent  business  besides  that  of  mankind,  ever 
furnished  such  a  pointed  example  of  the  truth  of  the 
observation. 

The  first  project  of  a  public  nature  organized  by  him 
was  the  Junto,  a  project  of  which  he  received  the  hint 
from  the  Neighborhood  Benefit  Societies,  established  by 
Cotton  Mather,  who,  it  would  be  an  egregious  error  to 


*N 


n8       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

suppose,  did  nothing  in  his  life  but  hound  hapless  wretches 
to  death  for  witchcraft.  The  Junto  founded  by  Franklin, 
when  he  was  a  journeyman  printer,  about  twenty-one 
years  of  age,  was  primarily  an  association  for  mutual 
improvement.  It  met  every  Friday  evening,  and  its  rules, 
which  were  drafted  by  him,  required  every  member  in 
turn  to  produce  one  or  more  queries  on  some  point  of 
morals,  politics  or  natural  philosophy,  to  be  discussed  by 
its  members,  and  once  every  three  months  to  produce  and 
read  an  essay  of  his  own  writing  on  any  subject  he  pleased. 
Under  the  regulations,  the  debates  were  to  be  conducted 
with  a  presiding  officer  in  the  chair,  and  in  the  sincere 
spirit  of  inquiry  after  truth  without  fondness  for  dispute 
or  desire  for  victory.  Dogmatism  and  direct  contradic- 
tion were  made  contraband,  and  prohibited  under  small 
pecuniary  penalties. N  With  a  few  rough  strokes  Franklin 
etches  to  the  life  in  the  Autobiography  all  the  first  members 
of  the  association.  We  linger  just  now  only  on  his 
portrait  of  Thomas  Godfrey,  "a  self-taught  mathe- 
matician, great  in  his  way,  and  afterward  inventor  of  what 
is  now  called  Hadley's  Quadrant.  But  he  knew  little  out 
of  his  way,  and  was  not  a  pleasing  companion;  as,  like 
most  great  mathematicians  I  have  met  with,  he  expected 
universal  precision  in  everything  said,  or  was  forever 
denying  or  distinguishing  upon  trifles,  to  the  disturbance 
of  all  conversation.  He  soon  left  us."  All  of  the  first 
members  except  Robert  Grace,  a  young  gentleman  of 
some  fortune,  derived  their  livelihood  from  the  simple 
pursuits  of  a  small  provincial  town,  but  all  in  one  way  or 
another  were  under  the  spell  exerted  by  a  love  of  reading, 
or  something  else  outside  of  the  dull  treadmill  of  daily 
necessity.  From  the  number  of  journeymen  mechanics 
in  it  the  Junto  came  to  be  known  in  Philadelphia  as  the 
Leathern  Apron  Club.  An  applicant  for  initiation  had  to 
stand  up  and  declare,  with  one  hand  laid  upon  his  breast, 
that  he  had  "no  particular  disrespect"  for  any  member  of 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    119 

the  Junto;  that  he  loved  mankind  in  general,  of  whatso- 
ever profession  or  religion;  that  he  thought  no  person 
ought  to  be  harmed  in  his  body,  name  or  goods  for  mere 
speculative  opinion,  or  for  his  external  way  of  worship, 
that  he  loved  the  truth  for  the  truth's  sake,  and  would 
endeavor  impartially  to  find  and  receive  it,  and  communi- 
cate it  to  others.  In  all  this  the  spirit  of  Franklin  is 
manifest  enough. 

Quite  as  manifest,  too,  is  the  spirit  of  Franklin  in  the 
twenty-four  standing  queries  which  wefe  read  at  every 
weekly  meeting  with  "a  pause  between  each  while  one 
might  fill  and  drink  a  glass  of  wine,"  and  which  pro- 
pounded the  following  interrogatories: 

Have  you  read  over  these  queries  this  morning,  in  order  to 
consider  what  you  might  have  to  offer  the  Junto  touching 
any  one  of  them  viz:? 

1.  Have  you  met  with  anything  in  the  author  you  last 
read,  remarkable,  or  suitable  to  be  communicated  to  the 
Junto,  particularly  in  history,  morality,  poetry,  physic, 
travels,  mechanic  arts,  or  other  parts  of  knowledge? 

2.  What  new  story  have  you  lately  heard  agreeable  for 
telling  in  conversation? 

3.  Hath  any  citizen  in  your  knowledge  failed  in  his  busi- 
ness lately,  and  what  have  you  heard  of  the  cause? 

4.  Have  you  lately  heard  of  any  citizen's  thriving  well,  and 
by  what  means? 

5.  Have  you  lately  heard  how  any  present  rich  man,  here 
or  elsewhere,  got  his  estate? 

6.  Do  you  know  of  a  fellow-citizen,  who  has  lately  done  a 
worthy  action,  deserving  praise  and  imitation;  or  who  has 
lately  committed  an  error,  proper  for  us  to  be  warned  against 
and  avoid? 

7.  "What  unhappy  effects  of  intemperance  have  you  lately 
observed  or  heard;  of  imprudence,  of  passion,  or  of  any  other 
vice  or  folly? 

8.  What  happy  effects  of  temperance,  prudence,  of  modera- 
tion, or  of  any  other  virtue? 


120      Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

9.  Have  you  or  any  of  your  acquaintance  been  lately  sick 
or  wounded?  if  so,  what  remedies  were  used,  and  what  were 
their  effects? 

10.  Whom  do  you  know  that  are  shortly  going  voyages  or 
journeys,  if  one  should  have  occasion  to  send  by  them? 

11.  Do  you  think  of  anything  at  present,  in  which  the 
Junto  may  be  serviceable  to  mankind,  to  their  country,  to 
their  friends,  or  to  themselves? 

12.  Hath  any  deserving  stranger  arrived  in  town  since 
last  meeting,  that  you  have  heard  of?;  and  what  have  you 
heard  or  observed  of  his  character  or  merits?;  and  whether, 
think  you,  it  lies  in  the  power  of  the  Junto  to  oblige  him,  or 
encourage  him  as  he  deserves? 

13.  Do  you  know  of  any  deserving  young  beginner  lately 
set  up,  whom  it  lies  in  the  power  of  the  Junto  anyway  to 
encourage? 

14.  Have  you  lately  observed  any  defect  in  the  laws  of  your 
country,  of  which  it  would  be  proper  to  move  the  legislature 
for  an  amendment?;  or  do  you  know  of  any  beneficial  law 
that  is  wanting? 

15.  Have  you  lately  observed  any  encroachment  on  the 
just  liberties  of  the  people? 

16.  Hath  anybody  attacked  your  reputation  lately?;  and 
what  can  the  Junto  do  towards  securing  it? 

17.  Is  there  any  man  whose  friendship  you  want,  and 
which  the  Junto,  or  any  of  them,  can  procure  for  you? 

18.  Have  you  lately  heard  any  member's  character 
attacked,  and  how  have  you  defended  it? 

19.  Hath  any  man  injured  you,  from  whom  it  is  in  the 
power  of  the  Junto  to  procure  redress? 

20.  In  what  manner  can  the  Junto  or  any  of  tnem,  assist 
you  in  any  of  your  honorable  designs? 

21.  Have  you  any  weighty  affair  on  hand  in  which  you 
think  the  advice  of  the  Junto  may  be  of  service? 

22.  What  benefits  have  you  lately  received  from  any  man 
not  present? 

23.  Is  there  any  difficulty  in  matters  of  opinion,  of  justice, 
and  injustice,  which  you  would  gladly  have  discussed  at  this 
time? 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    121 

24.  Do  you  see  anything  amiss  in  the  present  customs  or 
proceedings  of  the  Junto,  which  might  be  amended? 

These  queries  render  it  obvious  that  the  Junto  in  actual 
operation  far  transcended  the  scope  of  a  mere  association 
for  mutual  improvement.  Such  a  strong  desire  was 
entertained  by  its  members  to  bring  their  friends  into  it 
that  Franklin  finally  suggested  that  each  member  should 
organize  a  separate  club,  secretly  subordinate  to  the 
parent  body,  and  in  this  way  help  to  extend  the  sphere  of 
the  Junto's  usefulness;  and  this  suggestion  was  followed 
by  the  formation  of  five  or  six  such  clubs  with  such  names 
as  the  Vine,  the  Union  and  the  Band,  which,  as  time  went 
on,  became  centres  of  agitation  for  the  promotion  of 
public  aims. 

Cotton  Mather  would  scarcely  have  regarded  a  club 
with  such  liberal  principles  as  the  Junto  as  an  improve- 
ment upon  its  prototype,  the  Neighborhood  Benefit 
Society.  But,  between  the  answers  to  the  standing 
queries  of  the  Junto,  its  essays,  its  debates,  the  declama- 
tions, which  were  also  features  of  its  exercises,  the  jolly 
songs  sung  at  its  annual  meeting,  and  its  monthly  meet- 
ings during  mild  weather  "  across  the  river  for  bodily 
exercisQ, "  it  must  have  been  an  agreeable  and  instructive 
club  indeed.  'It  lasted  nearly  forty  years,  and  "was," 
Franklin  claims  in  the  Autobiography,  "the  best  school  of 
philosophy,  morality  and  politics  that  then  existed  in  the 
province.''  A  book,  in  which  he  entered  memoranda  of 
various  kinds  in  regard  to  it,  shows  that  he  followed  its 
proceedings  with  the  keenest  interest. 

Is  self-interest  the  rudder  that  steers  mankind?;  can  a~man 
arrive  at  perfection  in  this  life?;  does  it  not,  in  a  general  way, 
require  great  study  and  intense  application  for  a  poor  man  to 
become  rich  and  powerful,  if  he  would  do  it  without  the  for- 
feiture of  his  honesty?;  why  does  the  flame  of  a  candle  tend 
upward  in  a  spire?;  whence  comes  the  dew  that  stands  on  the 


122       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

outside  of  a  tankard  that  has  cold  water  in  it  in  the  summer 
time? 


— such  are  some  of  the  questions,  thoroughly  racy  of 
Franklin  in  his  youth,  which  are  shown  by  this 
book  to  have  been  framed  by  him  for  the  Junto. 
After  the  association  had  been  under  way  for  a  time,  he 
suggested  that  all  the  books,  owned  by  its  members, 
should  be  assembled  at  the  room,  in  which  its  meetings 
were  held,  for  convenience  of  reference  in  discussion,  and 
so  that  each  member  might  have  the  benefit  of  the  volumes 
belonging  to  every  other  member  almost  as  fully  as  if  they 
belonged  to  himself.  The  suggestion  was  assented  to,  and 
one  end  of  the  room  was  filled  with  such  books  as  the 
members  could  spare;  but  the  arrangement  did  not  work 
well  in  practice  and  was  soon  abandoned. 

No  sooner,  however,  did  this  idea  die  down  than  another 
shot  up  from  its  stump.  This  was  the  subscription  library, 
now  the  Philadelphia  City  Library,  founded  by  Franklin. 
In  the  Autobiography,  he  speaks  of  this  library  as  his  first 
project  of  a  public  nature;  but  it  seems  to  us,  as  we  have 
already  said,  that  the  distinction  fairly  belongs  to  the 
Junto.  He  brought  the  project  to  the  attention  of  the 
public  through  formal  articles  of  association,  and,  by 
earnest  efforts  in  an  unlettered  community,  which,  more- 
over, had  little  money  to  spare  for  any  such  enterprise, 
induced  fifty  persons,  mostly  young  tradesmen,  to  sub- 
scribe forty  shillings  each  as  a  contribution  to  a  foundation 
fund  for  the  first  purchase  of  books,  and  ten  shillings  more 
annually  as  a  contribution  for  additional  volumes.  Later, 
the  association  was  incorporated.  It  was  while  soliciting 
subscriptions  at  this  time  that  Franklin  was  taught  by  the 
objections  or  reserve  with  which  his  approaches  were  met 
the  "impropriety  of  presenting  one's  self  as  the  proposer 
of  any  useful  project,  that  might  be  suppos'd  to  raise 
one's  reputation  in  the  smallest  degree  above  that  of  one's 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    123 

neighbors,  when  one  has  need  of  their  assistance  to 
accomplish  that  project."  He,  therefore,  kept  out  of 
sight  as  much  as  possible,  and  represented  the  scheme  as 
that  of  a  number  of  friends  who  had  requested  him  to 
submit  it  to  such  persons  as  they  thought  lovers  of  reading. 
This  kind  of  self-effacement  was  attended  with  such 
happy  consequences  that  he  never  failed  to  adopt  it 
subsequently  upon  similar  occasions.  From  his  success- 
ful experience,  he  says  in  the  Autobiography,  he  could 
heartily  recommend  it.  "The  present  little  sacrifice  of 
your  vanity,"  to  use  his  own  words,  "will  afterwards  be 
amply  repaid.  If  it  remains  a  while  uncertain  to  whom 
the  merit  belongs,  some  one  more  vain  than  yourself  will 
be  encouraged  to  claim  it,  and  then  even  envy  will  be 
disposed  to  do  you  justice  by  plucking  those  assumed 
feathers,  and  restoring  them  to  their  right  owner." 
Alexander  Wedderburn's  famous  philippic,  of  which  we 
shall  have  something  to  say  further  on,  did  not  consist 
altogether  of  misapplied  adjectives.  Franklin  was  at 
times  the  "wily  American, "  but  usually  for  the  purpose 
of  improving  the  condition  of  his  fellow-creatures  in  spite 
of  themselves. 

The  library,  once  established,  grew  apace.  From  time 
to  time,  huge  folios  and  quartos  were  added  to  it  by 
purchase  or  donation,  from  which  nobody  profited  more 
than  Franklin  himself  with  his  insatiable  avidity  for 
knowledge.  The  first  purchase  of  books  for  it  was  made 
by  Peter  Collinson  of  London,  who  threw  in  with  the 
purchase  as  presents  from  himself  Newton's  Principia  and 
the  Gardener's  Dictionary,  and  continued  for  thirty  years 
to  act  as  the  purchasing  agent  of  the  institution,  accom- 
panying each  additional  purchase  with  additional  presents 
from  himself.  Evidence  is  not  wanting  that  the  first 
arrival  of  books  was  awaited  with  eager  expectancy. 
Among  Franklin's  memoranda  with  regard  to  the  Junto 
we  find  the  following:    "When  the  books  of  the  library 


124       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

come,  every  member  shall  undertake  some  author,  that 
he  may  not  be  without  observations  to  communicate." 
When  the  books  finally  came,  they  were  placed  in  the 
assembly  room  of  the  Junto ;  a  librarian  was  selected,  and 
the  library  was  thrown  open  once  a  week  for  the  distribu- 
tion of  books.  The  second  year  Franklin  himself  acted  as 
librarian,  and  for  printing  a  catalogue  of  the  first  books 
shortly  after  their  arrival,  and  for  other  printing  services, 
he  was  exempted  from  the  payment  of  his  annual  ten 
shillings  for  two  years. 

Among  the  numerous  donations  of  money,  books  and 
curiosities  made  to  the  library,  were  gifts  of  books  and 
electrical  apparatus  by  Thomas  Penn,  and  the  gift  of  an 
electrical  tube,  with  directions  for  its  use,  by  Peter 
Collinson,  which  proved  of  incalculable  value  to  science 
in  the  hands  of  Franklin  who  promptly  turned  it  to 
experimental  purposes.  When  Peter  Kalm,  the  Swedish 
naturalist,  was  in  Philadelphia  in  1748,  "many  little 
libraries,* '  organized  on  the  same  plan  as  the  original 
library,  had  sprung  from  it.  Non-subscribers  were  then 
allowed  to  take  books  out  of  it,  subject  to  pledges  of 
indemnity  sufficient  to  cover  their  value,  and  to  the  pay- 
ment for  the  use  of  a  folio  of  eight  pence  a  week,  for  the 
use  of  a  quarto  of  six  pence,  and  for  the  use  of  any  other 
book  of  four  pence.  Kalm,  as  a  distinguished  stranger, 
was  allowed  the  use  of  any  book  in  the  collection  free  of 
charge.  In  1764,  the  shares  of  the  library  company  were 
worth  nearly  twenty  pounds,  and  its  collections  were  then 
believed  to  have  a  value  of  seventeen  hundred  pounds. 
In  1785,  the  number  of  volumes  was  5487;  in  1807, 
14,457;  in  1861,  70,000;  and  in  1912,  237,677.  After  over- 
flowing more  contracted  quarters,  the  contents  of  the 
library  have  finally  found  a  home  in  a  handsome  building 
at  the  northwest  corner  of  Locust  and  Juniper  Streets 
and  in  the  Ridgway  Branch  Building  at  the  corner  of 
Broad  and  Christian  Streets.     But,  never,  it  is  safe  to  say, 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    125 

will  this  library,  enlarged  and  efficiently  administered  as 
it  is,  perform  such  an  invaluable  service  as  it  did  in  its 
earlier  years.  "This,"  Franklin  declares  in  the  Auto- 
biography, "was  the  mother  of  all  the  North  American 
subscription  libraries,  now  so  numerous.  It  is  become 
a  great  thing  itself,  and  continually  increasing.  These 
libraries  have  improved  the  general  conversation  of  the 
Americans,  made  the  common  tradesmen  and  farmers  as 
intelligent  as  most  gentlemen  from  other  countries,  and 
perhaps  have  contributed  in  some  degree  to  the  stand  so 
generally  made  throughout  the  colonies  in  defence  of  their 
privileges." 

Franklin  next  turned  his  attention  to  the  reform  of  the 
city  watch.  Under  the  existing  system,  it  was  supervised 
by  the  different  constables  of  the  different  wards  of 
Philadelphia  in  turn.  The  Dogberry  in  charge  would 
warn  a  number  of  householders  to  attend  him  for  the 
night.  Such  householders  as  desired  to  be  wholly  exempt 
from  the  service  could  secure  exemption  by  paying  him 
six  shillings  a  year,  which  was  supposed  to  be  expended  by 
him  in  hiring  substitutes,  but  the  fund  accumulated  in  this 
way  was  much  more  than  was  necessary  for  the  purpose 
and  rendered  the  constableship  a  position  of  profit.  Often 
the  ragamuffins  gathered  up  by  a  constable  as  his  aids 
were  quite  willing  to  act  as  such  for  no  reward  except  a 
little  drink.  The  consequence  was  that  his  underlings 
were  for  the  most  part  tippling  when  they  should  have 
been  moving  around  on  their  beats.  Altogether,  they 
seem  to  have  been  men  who  would  not  have  been  slow  to 
heed  the  older  Dogberry's  advice  to  his  watchmen  that, 
if  one  of  them  bid  a  vagrom  man  stand,  and  he  did  not 
stand,  to  take  no  note  of  him,  but  to  let  him  go,  and 
presently  call  the  rest  of  the  watch  together  and  thank 
God  that  he  was  rid  of  a  knave. 

To  this  situation  Franklin  addressed  himself  by  writing 
a  paper  for  the  Junto,  not  only  setting  forth  the  abuses  of 


126       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

the  existing  system  but  insisting  upon  its  injustice  in 
imposing  the  same  six-shilling  tax  upon  a  poor  widow, 
whose  whole  property  to  be  guarded  by  the  watch  did  not 
perhaps  exceed  the  value  of  fifty  pounds,  as  upon  the 
wealthiest  merchant  who  had  thousands  of  pounds'  worth 
of  goods  in  his  stores.  His  proposal  was  the  creation  of  a 
permanent  paid  police  to  be  maintained  by  an  equal, 
proportional  property  tax.  The  idea  was  duly  approved 
by  the  Junto,  and  communicated  to  its  affiliated  clubs, 
as  if  it  had  arisen  in  each  of  them,  and,  though  it  was  not 
immediately  carried  into  execution,  yet  the  popular 
agitation,  which  ensued  over  it,  paved  the  way  for  a  law 
providing  for  it  which  was  enacted  a  few  years  afterwards, 
when  the  Junto  and  the  other  clubs  had  acquired  more 
popular  influence. 

About  the  same  time,  the  same  indefatigable  propa- 
gandist wrote  for  the  Junto  a  paper,  which  was  subse- 
quently published,  on  the  different  accidents  and  defaults 
by  which  houses  were  set  on  fire,  with  warnings  against 
them,  and  suggestions  as  to  how  they  might  be  averted. 
There  was  much  public  talk  about  it,  and  a  company  of 
thirty  persons  was  soon  formed,  under  the  name  of  the 
Union  Fire  Company,  for  the  purpose  of  more  effectively 
extinguishing  fires,  and  removing  and  protecting  goods 
endangered  by  them.  Under  its  articles  of  agreement, 
every  member  was  obliged  to  keep  always  in  good  order, 
and  fit  for  use,  a  certain  number  of  leather  buckets,  with 
strong  bags  and  baskets  for  transporting  goods,  which 
were  to  be  brought  to  every  fire;  and  it  was  further  agreed 
that  the  members  of  the  company  were  to  meet  once  a 
month  and  spend  a  social  evening  together  in  the  discus- 
sion and  interchange  of  such  useful  ideas  as  occurred  to 
them  upon  the  subject  of  fires.  The  formation  of  this 
company  led  to  the  formation  of  one  company  after 
another  until  the  associations  became  so  numerous  as  to 
include  most  of  the  inhabitants  of  Philadelphia  who  were 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    127 

men  of  property.  It  was  still  flourishing  more  than  fifty 
years  after  its  establishment,  when  its  history  was  nar- 
rated in  the  Autobiography,  and  Franklin  and  one  other 
person,  a  year  older  than  himself,  were  the  only  survivors 
of  its  original  members.  The  small  fines,  paid  by  its 
members  as  penalties  for  absence  from  its  monthly  meet- 
ings, had  been  used  to  such  advantage  in  the  purchase  of 
fire-engines,  ladders,  fire-hooks  and  other  useful  imple- 
ments for  the  different  companies  that  Franklin  then 
questioned  whether  there  was  a  city  in  the  world  better 
provided  than  Philadelphia  with  the  means  for  repressing 
incipient  conflagrations.  Indeed,  he  said,  since  the 
establishment  of  these  companies,  the  city  had  never 
lost  by  fire  more  than  one  or  two  houses  at  a  time;  and 
often  flames  were  extinguished  before  the  house  they 
threatened  had  been  half  consumed. 

"Ideas  will  string  themselves  like  Ropes  of  Onions," 
Franklin  once  declared.  This  was  certainly  true  of  the 
plans  which  his  public  spirit  devised  for  the  improvement 
of  Philadelphia.  The  next  thing  to  which  his  hand  was 
turned  was  the  creation  of  an  academy.  In  1743,  he 
drew  up  a  proposal  for  one,  but,  being  disappointed  in  his 
efforts  to  persuade  the  Reverend  Mr.  Peters  to  act  as  its 
head,  he  let  the  project  lie  dormant  for  a  time.  While  it 
remained  so,  remembering  Poor  Richard's  maxim  that 
leisure  is  time  for  doing  something  useful,  he  passed  to  the 
organization  of  a  system  of  military  defences  for  the 
Province  and  the  founding  of  a  Philosophical  Society.  Of 
the  former  task  we  shall  speak  hereafter.  The  latter  was 
initiated  by  a  circular  letter  from  him  to  his  various 
learned  friends  in  the  Northern  Colonies,  proposing  the 
formation  of  a  society  for  the  purpose  of  promoting  a 
commerce  of  speculation,  discovery  and  experimentation 
between  its  members  with  regard  to  scientific  interests 
of  every  sort.  A  correspondence  with  the  Royal  Society 
of  London  and  the  Dublin  Society  and  "all  philosophical 


128       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

experiments  that  let  light  into  the  nature  of  things,  tend  to 
increase  the  power  of  man  over  matter,  and  multiply  the 
conveniences  or  pleasures  of  life"  were  among  the  things 
held  out  in  the  proposal.  Colonial  America  was  far  more 
favorable  to  practical  activity  than  to  philosophical 
investigation,  but  the  society,  nevertheless,  performed  an 
office  of  no  little  usefulness.  When  Franklin  built  a  new 
wing  to  his  residence  in  Philadelphia,  after  his  return  from 
Paris,  he  provided  a  large  apartment  on  the  first  floor  of 
this  addition  for  the  accommodation  of  the  American 
Philosophical  Society  into  which  this  Society  had  been 
merged.  When  he  made  his  will,  he  was  the  President  of 
the  new  society,  and  he  bequeathed  to  it  his  History  of  the 
Academy  of  Sciences,  in  sixty  or  seventy  volumes  quarto; 
and,  when  he  died,  one  of  its  members,  Dr.  William  Smith, 
pronounced  an  eulogy  upon  his  character  and  services. 
The  wing  of  his  house,  in  which  space  was  set  apart  for  the 
society,  was  itself,  in  its  precautions  against  fire,  one 
worthy  of  a  vigilant  and  enlightened  philosopher.  None 
of  the  woodwork  of  one  room,  for  instance,  communicated 
with  the  woodwork  of  any  other.  Franklin  thought, 
however,  that  the  staircases  should  have  been  of  stone, 
and  the  floors  tiled  as  in  Paris;  and  that  the  roof  should 
have  been  either  tiled  or  slated. x 

When  the  Philosophical  Society  of  his  early  life  had 
been  founded,  and  the  restoration  of  peace  between  Great 
Britain  and  her  enemies  had  diverted  his  mind  from  his 
plans  for  the  military  protection  of  Philadelphia,  he  turned 
again  to  the  slumbering  Academy.  His  first  step  was  to 
secure  the  assistance  of  a  considerable  number  of  active 
friends,  of  whom  the  Junto  furnished  a  good  part,  and  his 

1  The  American  Philosophical  Society  Held  at  Philadelphia  for  Pro- 
moting Useful  Knowledge  was  formed  in  1769  by  the  union  of  the  Philo- 
sophical Society  founded  by  Franklin,  which,  after  languishing  for  many 
years,  was  revived  in  1767,  and  The  American  Society  Held  at  Phila- 
delphia for  the  Promotion  of  Useful  Knowledge;  and  Franklin,  though 
absent  in  England,  was  elected  its  first  President. 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    129 

next  to  write  and  publish  a  pamphlet  entitled  Proposals 
Relating  to  the  Education  of  Youth  in  Pennsylvania. 
In  this  pamphlet  he  was  careful,  as  usual,  to  bring  his  aim 
forward  rather  as  that  of  a  group  of  public-spirited  gentle- 
men than  of  himself.  It  was  distributed  gratuitously 
among  the  most  prominent  citizens  of  Philadelphia,  and, 
as  soon  as  he  thought  that  their  minds  had  been  reduced 
to  a  receptive  condition  by  its  appeal,  he  solicited  sub- 
scriptions for  the  establishment  and  maintenance  of  the 
Academy,  payable  in  five  annual  instalments.  Four 
thousand  pounds  were  subscribed,  and  Franklin  and 
Tench  Francis,  the  attorney-general  of  the  province,  and 
the  uncle  of  Sir  Philip  Francis,  of  Junius  fame,  were 
appointed  by  the  subscribers  to  draw  up  a  constitution 
for  the  government  of  the  foundation.  This  was  drafted 
and  signed ;  a  house  was  hired,  masters  were  engaged,  and 
the  institution  was  promptly  opened.  So  fast  did  the 
scholars  increase  that  need  was  soon  felt  for  a  larger  school- 
edifice.  This  was  happily  found  in  the  great  building 
which  had  sprung  up  at  the  sound  of  Whitefield's  voice 
as  if  at  the  sound  of  Amphion's  lyre.  By  an  arrangement 
between  the  Trustees  for  the  building,  of  whom  Franklin 
was  one,  and  the  Trustees  for  the  Academy,  of  whom 
Franklin  was  also  one,  the  building  was  deeded  to  the 
latter  Trustees,  upon  the  condition  that  they  would  dis- 
charge the  indebtedness  with  which  it  was  burdened,  keep 
forever  open  in  it  a  large  hall  for  occasional  preachers, 
according  to  the  original  intent  of  its  builders,  and  main- 
tain a  free  school  for  the  instruction  of  poor  children. 
With  some  internal  changes,  and  the  purchase  of  an  addi- 
tion to  its  site,  the  edifice  was  soon,  under  the  superintend- 
ence of  Franklin,  made  ready  for  the  use  of  the  Academy. 
Afterwards,  the  Trustees  for  the  Academy  were  incor- 
porated, and  the  institution  received  various  donations 
from  British  friends,  the  Proprietaries  and  the  Provincial 
Assembly,    and,    finally,    grew   into   the   University   of 

VOL.  1—9 


130       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Pennsylvania.  Franklin  was  one  of  its  Trustees  for  more 
than  forty  years,  and  had,  he  says  in  the  Autobiography, 
the  very  great  pleasure  of  seeing  a  number  of  the  youth, 
who  had  received  their  education  in  it,  distinguished  by 
their  improved  abilities,  serviceable  in  public  stations  and 
ornaments  to  their  country. 

In  none  of  his  creations  did  Franklin  display  a  keener 
interest  than  in  the  Academy.  From  its  inception  until 
he  embarked  upon  his  second  voyage  to  England,  his 
correspondence  contains  frequent  references  to  it.  One 
of  his  most  earnest  desires  was  to  secure  the  celebrated 
Episcopal  clergyman,  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson,  of  Connecti- 
cut, afterwards  the  president  of  King's  College,  New  York, 
as  its  Rector.  A  salary  of  one  hundred  pounds  sterling  per 
annum,  the  opportunity  to  deliver  a  lecture  now  and  then 
in  the  large  hall,  set  apart  for  what  might  in  our  day  be 
called  "tramp"  preachers,  until  he  could  collect  a  con- 
gregation strong  enough  to  build  him  a  church,  the  usual 
marriage  and  christening  fees,  paid  by  persons  of  the 
best  social  standing,  the  occasional  presents  bestowed  by 
wealthy  individuals  upon  a  minister  of  their  liking,  and  the 
opening  that,  as  time  went  on,  the  change  of  residence 
might  afford  to  his  son,  who  in  the  beginning  might.be 
employed  as  a  tutor  at  a  salary  of  sixty  or  seventy  pounds 
per  annum,  were  the  allurements  with  which  the  reverend 
doctor  was  approached  by  Franklin.  To  the  doctor's 
objection  that  another  Episcopal  church  in  Philadelphia 
might  sap  the  strength  of  the  existing  one,  the  resourceful 
tempter  replied  with  the  illustration,  which  has  been  so 
much  admired: 


I  had  for  several  years  nailed  against  the  wall  of  my  house  a 
pigeon-box,  that  would  hold  six  pair ;  and,  though  they  bred  as 
fast  as  my  neighbours'  pigeons,  I  never  had  more  than  six  pair, 
the  old  and  strong  driving  out  the  young  and  weak,  and 
obliging  them  to  seek  new  habitations.     At  length  I  put  up  an 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    131 

additional  box  with  apartments  for  entertaining  twelve  pair 
more;  and  it  was  soon  filled  with  inhabitants,  by  the  over- 
flowing of  my  first  box,  and  of  others  in  the  neighbourhood. 
This  I  take  to  be  a  parallel  case  with  the  building  a  new  church 
here. 


In  spite  of  everything,  however,  Doctor  Johnson  proved 
obdurate  to  Franklin's  coaxing  pen. 

The  Academy  was  opened  in  1749.  In  a  letter  to  Jared 
Eliot  in  1 75 1,  Franklin  informs  us  that  the  annual  salaries 
paid  by  it  were  as  follows:  The  Rector,  who  taught  Latin 
and  Greek,  two  hundred  pounds,  the  English  Master,  one 
hundred  and  fifty  pounds,  the  Mathematical  Professor, 
one  hundred  and  twenty-five  pounds,  and  three  assistant 
tutors  each,  sixty  pounds.  The  annual  fee  paid  by  each 
pupil  was  four  pounds.  With  one  of  the  persons  who  did 
act  as  Rector,  Franklin  seems  to  have  been  on  intimate 
terms.  This  was  David  Martin,  who,  after  a  brief 
incumbency,  died  suddenly  of  a  quinsy,  and  was  buried 
in  much  state.  In  a  letter  to  William  Strahan,  Franklin 
speaks  of  him  as  "  Honest  David  Martin,  .  .  .  my 
principal  Antagonist  at  Chess."  Vice-Provost  at  one 
time  was  Francis  Alison,  whom  Franklin  in  a  letter  to 
Jared  Eliot  in  1755  introduced  as  his  "particular  friend," 
and  twenty  or  more  folio  pages,  large  paper,  well  filled  on 
the  subjects  of  Agriculture,  Philosophy,  Eliot's  own 
Catholic  Divinity  and  various  other  points  of  learning 
equally  useful  and  engaging.  With  still  another  Rector, 
Dr.  William  Smith,  Franklin's  relations  were  at  first  very 
friendly,  but  afterwards,  when  Smith  espoused  the  cause 
of  the  Proprietary  Party  and  began  to  abuse  Franklin 
unstintedly,  became  so  constrained  that  the  two  ceased 
to  be  on  speaking  terms.  In  an  early  letter  to  Smith, 
before  Smith  became  Rector,  Franklin  said  that  he  should 
be  extremely  glad  to  see  and  converse  with  him  in  Phila- 
delphia, and  to  correspond  with  him  after  he  settled  in 


132       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

England;    "for,"   he   observed,    "an   acquaintance   and 
communication  with  men  of  learning,  virtue,  and  public 
spirit,  is  one  of  my  greatest  enjoyments."     In  the  same 
letter,  Franklin  stated  that  the  mathematical  school  was 
pretty  well  furnished  with  instruments,   and  that  the 
English  library  was  a  good  one,  and  included  a  middling 
apparatus    for    experimental    philosophy,    which    they 
purposed  to  complete  speedily.     The  library  left  by  James 
Logan,  the  accomplished  Quaker,  to  the  public,  "one  of 
the  best  collections  in  America,"  in  the  opinion  of  Frank- 
lin, was  also  shortly  to  be  opened.     Indeed,  Franklin  was 
in  hopes,  he  further  declared,  that  in  a  few  years  they 
would  see  a  perfect  institution.     In  another  letter  to 
Smith,  written  a  few  days  later,  he  said  in  reference  to  a 
paper  on  The  Ideal  College  of  Mirania  written  by  Smith, 
"For  my  part,  I  know  not  when  I  have  read  a  piece  that 
has  more  affected  me ;  so  noble  and  just  are  the  sentiments, 
so  warm  and  animated  the  language. "     He  was  too  frank 
a  man,  however,  not  to  express  the  wish  that  the  author 
had  omitted  from  this  performance  certain  reflections 
upon  the  discipline  and  government  of  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge Universities  and  certain  outbreaks  of  resentment 
against  the  author's  adversaries.     "In  such  cases,"  he 
remarked,  "the  noblest  victory  is  obtained  by  neglect, 
and  by  shining  on. "     He  little  knew  how  soon  he  would 
be  called  upon  to  reck  his  own  rede.     A  few  years  later, 
Franklin  thanks  Whitefield  for  a  generous  benefaction  to 
the  German  school.     '  \  They  go  on  pretty  well, '  I  he  writes, 
"and  will  do  better, "  he  adds  dryly,  in  terms  which  make 
it  apparent  enough  that  the  honeymoon  of  early  pre- 
possession was  over,  "when  Mr.  Smith,  who  has  at  present 
the  principal  Care  of  them,  shall  learn  to  mind  Party- 
writing  and  Party  Politicks  less,  and  his  proper  Business 
more;  which  I  hope  time  will   bring  about."     In  the 
succeeding  November  he  was  not  even  on  speaking  terms 
with  Smith.     This  fact  was  communicated  by  him  to 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    133 

Peter  Collinson  in  a  letter  with  this  statement  about 
Smith:  "He  has  scribbled  himself  into  universal  Dislike 
here;  the  Proprietary  Faction  alone  countenances  him  a 
little ;  but  the  Academy  dwindles,  and  will  come  to  nothing 
if  he  is  continued."  A  few  weeks  later  in  another  letter 
to  Collinson  the  case  against  Smith  is  stated  more 
specifically:  "Smith  continues  still  in  the  Academy;  but  I 
imagine  will  not  much  longer,  unless  he  mends  his  Manners 
greatly,  for  the  Schools  decline  on  his  Account.  The 
Number  of  Scholars,  at  present,  that  pay,  not  exceeding 
118,  tho'  they  formerly  were  200."  From  a  letter  to 
David  Hall,  written  by  Franklin  during  his  second  sojourn 
in  England,  it  would  appear  that  Smith  was  quicker  to 
pay  off  debts  of  resentment  than  any  other  kind.  In  this 
letter  the  writer  tells  Hall  that  Osborne,  the  London  book- 
seller, had  asked  him  whether  he  would  be  safe  in  selling 
to  Smith  "a  large  Cargo  of  Books, "  and  that  he  had  told 
Osborne  that  he  believed  that  his  "Townsmen  who  were 
Smith's  Creditors  would  be  glad  to  see  him  come  back 
with  a  Cargo  of  any  kind,  as  they  might  have  some 
Chance  of  being  paid  out  of  it."  Smith  on  his  part  did 
not  fail  to  do  all  in  his  power  to  keep  Franklin  from  shining 
on.  In  a  letter  to  Caleb  Whitefoord  shortly  after  his 
second  return  from  England  in  1762,  Franklin  borrowed  a 
phrase  from  a  line  in  The  New  Foundling  Hospital  for  Wit. 
"The  Piece  from  your  own  Pencil,"  he  said,  "is  acknow- 
ledge to  bear  a  strong  and  striking  Likeness,  but  it  is  other- 
wise such  a  picture  of  your  Friend,  as  Dr.  Smith  would 
have  drawn,  black,  and  all  black. "  But  when  it  comes  to 
what  Franklin  in  the  Autobiography  calls  "negrofying,"  he, 
though  he  had  very  little  inclination  for  that  kind  of  com- 
petition, was  no  mean  artist  himself,  if  it  was  an  antagonist 
like  Smith  upon  whose  face  the  pigment  was  to  be  laid. 

I  do  not  wonder  at  the  behaviour  you  mention  of  Dr. 
Smith  towards  me  [he  wrote  to  Polly  Stevenson],  for  I  have 


134       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

long  since  known  him  thoroughly.  I  made  that  Man  my 
Enemy  by  doing  him  too  much  Kindness.  'Tis  the  honestest 
Way  of  acquiring  an  Enemy.  And,  since  'tis  convenient  to 
have  at  least  one  Enemy,  who  by  his  Readiness  to  revile  one 
on  all  Occasions,  may  make  one  careful  of  one's  Conduct,  I 
shall  keep  him  an  Enemy  for  that  purpose ;  and  shall  observe 
your  good  Mother's  Advice,  never  again  to  receive  him  as  a 
Friend.  She  once  admir'd  the  benevolent  Spirit  breath'd  in 
his  Sermons.  She  will  now  see  the  Justness  of  the  Lines  your 
Laureate  Whitehead  addresses  to  his  Poets,  and  which  I  now 
address  to  her : 

"Full  many  a  peevish,  envious,  slanderous  Elf 
Is,  in  his  Works,  Benevolence  itself. 
For  all  Mankind,  unknown,  his  Bosom  heaves; 
He  only  injures  those,  with  whom  he  lives, 
Read  then  the  Man ; — does  Truth  his  Actions  guide, 
Exempt  from  Petulance,  exempt  from  Pride  ? 
To  social  Duties  does  his  Heart  attend, 
As  Son,  as  Father,  Husband,  Brother,  Friend  ? 
Do  those,  who  know  him,  love  him  ?     If  they  do, 
You've  my  Permission:  you  may  love  him  too." 

Several  months  later  some  observations  upon  the 
character  of  Doctor  Smith,  equally  emphatic,  found  their 
way  into  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  William  Strahan. 
"Dr  Kelly  in  his  Letter, "  he  said  in  regard  to  a  letter  to 
Strahan  in  which  Dr.  Kelly,  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society, 
had  indicated  very  plainly  what  he  thought  of  Dr.  Smith, 
"appears  the  same  sensible,  worthy,  friendly  Man  I  ever 
found  him;  and  Smith,  as  usual,  just  his  Reverse. — I  have 
done  with  him:  For  I  believe  nobody  here  (Philadelphia) 
will  prevail  with  me  to  give  him  another  Meeting."  In 
his  preface  to  the  speech  of  Joseph  Galloway,  Franklin 
even  refers  to  Smith  as  "the  Poisoner  of  other  Characters." 
In  one  of  his  letters  William  Franklin  referred  to  him  as 
"that  Miscreant  Parson  Smith."  An  obscure,  or  com- 
paratively obscure,  person,  who  is  so  unfortunate  as  to 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    135 

have  a  feud  with  a  great  man,  is  likely  to  experience  some 
difficulty  in  obtaining  justice  at  the  hands  of  Posterity 
which  is  always  ready  to  retain  any  number  of  clever 
brushes  to  whitewash  the  latter  and  to  smear  a  black  coat 
over  the  former.  But  it  must  be  admitted  that  anyone 
who  quarrelled  with  such  a  social,  genial,  well-balanced 
being  as  Franklin  cannot  hope  to  escape  a  very  strong 
presumption  that  the  fault  was  his  own.  There  is  evidence, 
at  any  rate,  that,  on  one  occasion,  when  Smith  was  in 
England,  and  had  written  a  letter  to  Dr.  Fry,  the  President 
of  St.  John's  College,  Oxford,  in  which  Franklin  was 
aspersed,  the  latter  was  induced  to  meet  him  at  Strahan's 
house,  and  succeeded  in  drawing  from  him,  after  the 
letter  to  Dr.  Fry  had  been  read  over,  paragraph  by 
paragraph,  an  acknowledgment  that  it  contained  many 
particulars  in  which  the  writer  had  been  misled  by  wrong 
information,  and  that  the  whole  was  written  with  too 
much  rancor  and  asperity.  Indeed,  Smith  even  promised 
that  he  would  write  to  Dr.  Fry  admitting  the  respects  in 
which  his  statements  were  false;  but,  when  pressed  by 
Strahan  to  write  this  letter  on  the  spot,  he  declined  to  do 
so,  though  stating  that  he  would  call  upon  Strahan  in  a 
day  or  so  and  show  it  to  him  before  it  was  sent;  which 
he  never  did.  On  the  contrary,  when  subsequently  ques- 
tioned at  Oxford  concerning  his  promise  to  write  such  a 
letter,  he  ''denied  the  whole,  &  even  treated  the  question 
as  a  Calumny."  So  wrote  Dr.  Kelly  to  Strahan  in  the 
letter  already  mentioned  by  us.  "I  make  no  other 
comment  on  this  behaviour,"  said  Dr.  Kelly  further, 
"than  in  considering  him  (Smith)  extremely  unworthy  of 
the  Honour,  he  has  received,  from  our  University." 
The  fact  that,  despite  all  this,  at  Franklin's  death,  Dr. 
Smith,  at  the  request  of  the  American  Philosophical 
Society,  made  Franklin's  character  and  career  the  subject 
of  an  eulogistic  address  is  certainly  calculated  to  induce 
us  all  to  unite  in  the  prayer  of  Franklin  in  his  Articles  of 


136       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Belief  to  be  delivered  from  "  Anger  (that  momentary 
Madness)." 

Dr.  Smith  proved  to  be  one  fly  in  the  Academy  gallipot. 
The  other  was  the  extent  to  which  the  Latin  School  was 
pampered  at  the  expense  of  the  English  School  which  was 
very  close  to  the  heart  of  Franklin.  Its  insidious  en- 
croachments steadily  went  on  until  finally  the  English 
School  scarcely  had  a  foothold  in  the  institution  at  all. 
The  result  was  that  in  1769  it  had  been  reduced  from  its 
first  flourishing  condition,  when,  if  Franklin  may  be 
believed,  the  Academy  was  attended  by  some  little  boys 
under  seven,  who  could  deliver  an  oration  with  more 
propriety  than  most  preachers,  to  a  state  of  bare  suffer- 
ance. The  exercises  in  English  reading  and  speaking, 
once  the  delight  of  the  Trustees  and  of  the  parents  and 
other  relations  of  the  boys,  when  these  boys  were  trained 
by  Mr.  Dove,  the  English  Master,  with  all  the  different 
modulations  of  voice  required  by  sense  and  subject, 
languished  after  his  resignation  on  account  of  his  meagre 
salary,  and  at  length,  under  the  blighting  neglect  of  the 
Trustees,  were  wholly  discontinued.  The  English  school, 
to  use  Franklin's  forcible  expression,  was  simply  starved. 

All  this  was  set  forth  in  a  long,  dignified  and  able 
remonstrance  which  he  wrote  in  nearly  his  best  manner 
some  ten  months  before  his  death  when  his  body  was 
racked  at  times  by  excruciating  pains.  In  this  paper,  he 
narrated  with  uncommon  clearness  and  skill  the  gradual 
succession  of  influences  and  events  by  which  the  English 
School  had  been  reduced  to  a  condition  of  atrophy,  and 
contended  that  the  intentions  of  the  founders  of  the 
Academy  had  been  ruthlessly  and  unconscionably  abused. 
When  we  recall  the  circular  letter  in  which  he  proposed  the 
establishment  of  the  Academy  and  the  fact  that  it  is  by 
no  means  lacking  in  deference  to  the  dead  languages, 
which  still  held  the  human  mind  in  bondage  so  firmly,  we 
cannot  but  feel  that  the  founders  of  the  Academy  were 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    137 

not  quite  so  alive  to  the  supreme  importance  of  the  English 
School  as  Franklin  would  make  out.  The  truth  was  that 
a  long  time  was  yet  to  elapse  before  the  minds  of  educated 
men  could  become  emancipated  enough  to  see  that  a 
living  language,  which  they  are  using  every  day,  is  quite 
as  worthy  of  consideration,  to  say  the  least,  as  one  which 
fulfills  its  highest  function  in  perfecting  that  use  with  its 
own  rare  discipline,  strength  and  beauty.  Franklin  saw 
this  before  most  men  of  his  time,  first,  because  his  own 
lack  of  academic  training  saved  him  from  many  of  the 
narrowing  effects  of  tradition  and  routine,  and,  secondly, 
because  it  was  idle  to  expect  any  but  a  severely  practical 
view  of  the  relative  importance  of  the  dead  languages  and 
English  from  a  man  who  did  not  shrink  from  even  testing 
the  readiness  of  the  public  mind  to  give  its  assent  to  radical 
alterations  in  the  Lord's  Prayer  and  the  Episcopal  Prayer 
Book.  Be  this  as  it  may,  Franklin  did  not  hesitate  in  this 
paper  to  express  in  the  strongest  terms  his  sense  of  the 
inutility  of  Latin  and  Greek  as  parts  of  the  course  of 
instruction  at  the  Academy,  and,  of  course,  a  picturesque 
illustration  of  his  proposition  was  duly  forthcomng. 

At  what  Time  [he  said],  Hats  were  first  introduced  we  know 
not,  but  in  the  last  Century  they  were  universally  worn  thro'- 
out  Europe.  Gradually,  however,  as  the  Wearing  of  Wigs,  and 
Hair  nicely  dress' d  prevailed,  the  putting  on  of  Hats  was  dis- 
used by  genteel  People,  lest  the  curious  Arrangements  of  the 
Curls  and  Powdering  should  be  disordered;  and  Umbrellas 
began  to  supply  their  Place ;  yet  still  our  Considering  the  Hat 
as  a  part  of  Dress  continues  so  far  to  prevail,  that  a  Man  of 
fashion  is  not  thought  dress'd  without  having  one,  or  something 
like  one,  about  him,  which  he  carries  under  his  Arm.  So  that 
there  are  a  multitude  of  the  politer  people  in  all  the  courts  and 
capital  cities  of  Europe,  who  have  never,  nor  their  fathers 
before  them,  worn  a  hat  otherwise  than  as  a  chapeau  bras, 
though  the  utility  of  such  a  mode  of  wearing  it  is  by  no  means 
apparent,  and  it  is  attended  not  only  with  some  expense,  but 
with  a  degree  of  constant  trouble. 


138       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

The  still  prevailing  custom  of  having  schools  for  teaching 
generally  our  children  in  these  days,  the  Latin  and  Greek 
languages,  I  consider  therefore,  in  no  other  light  than  as  the 
Chapeau  bras  of  modern  Literature. 

Poor  Richard  had  his  word  to  say  about  the  man  who 
"was  so  learned,  that  he  could  name  a  horse  in  nine 
languages:  so  ignorant  that  he  bought  a  cow  to  ride  on. " 

This,  however,  was  not  the  spirit  in  which  Franklin 
sought  to  recruit  the  deficiencies  of  his  own  education — 
an  effort  which  proved  so  extraordinarily  successful  that 
we  are  inclined  to  think  that  in  the  pedagogic  insight  as 
well  as  extensive  knowledge,  disclosed  in  the  circular  letter 
proposing  the  establishment  of  the  Academy,  the  "Idea 
of  the  English  School  Sketch' d  Out  For  The  Consideration 
Of  The  Trustees  Of  The  Philadelphia  Academy,"  and 
"The  Observations  Relative  To  The  Intentions  Of  The 
Original  Founders  Of  The  Academy  In  Philadelphia" 
we  have  the  most  striking  proofs  after  all  of  the  natural 
power  and  assimilative  capacity  of  a  mind  which,  be  it 
recollected,  never  had  any  teacher  but  itself  after  its 
possessor  became  ten  years  of  age. 

In  the  Autobiography  we  are  told  by  Franklin  that  he 
was  unable  to  remember  when  he  could  not  read,  that  he 
was  sent  to  the  grammar  school  in  Boston  when  he  was 
eight  years  of  age,  that,  after  he  had  been  at  this  school 
for  not  quite  one  year,  though  in  that  time  he  had  become 
the  head  of  his  class,  and  had  even  been  advanced  to  the 
next  class  above  it,1  he  was  shifted  by  his  father  to  a 
school  for  writing  and  arithmetic  in  Boston,  kept  by  a  then 
famous  man,  Mr.  George  Brownell;  that  under  Brownell 

1  As  a  token  of  his  sense  of  obligation  to  the  instruction  derived  by  him 
in  his  boyhood  from  a  free  Boston  grammar  school,  Franklin  bequeathed 
the  sum  of  one  hundred  pounds  sterling  to  the  free  schools  of  that  city, 
subject  to  the  condition  that  it  was  to  be  invested,  and  that  the  interest 
produced  by  it  was  to  be  annually  laid  out  in  silver  medals,  to  be  awarded 
as  prizes. 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    139 

he  acquired  fair  writing  pretty  soon,  but  made  no  pro- 
gress in  arithmetic,  and  that,  at  ten  years  of  age,  he 
was  taken  home  to  assist  his  father  in  his  business  as  a 
tallow  chandler  and  soap  boiler.  Such  was  all  the  edu- 
cation except  what  was  self -imparted  that  the  founder 
of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  had  to  draw  upon 
when  he  outlined  the  future  courses  of  instruction  of  the 
Academy. 

But  this  self-imparted  education  was  no  mean  one. 
Putting  altogether  out  of  sight  the  general  reading  to  Which 
during  a  large  part  of  his  youth  Franklin  devoted  every 
moment  left  him  by  his  duties,  when  he  was  about  sixteen 
years  of  age,  having  been  made  ashamed  on  some  occasion 
of  his  ignorance  of  figures,  he  went  through  the  whole  of 
Cocker's  Arithmetic  by  himself  with  the  greatest  ease, 
and  followed  the  feat  up  by  acquainting  himself  with 
such  little  geometry  as  was  contained  in  Seller's  and 
Shermy's  books  on  Navigation.  Some  ten  or  eleven  years 
later,  he  renewed  the  study  of  languages;  for,  short  as 
was  his  connection  with  the  Boston  grammar  school,  he 
had  obtained  from  it  some  knowledge  of  Latin.  He 
quickly  mastered  French,  so  far  as  to  be  able  to  read 
French  books  with  facility.  Italian  he  learned  by  refusing 
to  play  chess  with  a  friend  who  was  also  learning  it,  except 
upon  the  condition  that  the  victor  in  every  game  was  to 
have  the  right  to  impose  upon  his  defeated  adversary 
tasks  in  Italian  which  the  latter  was  to  be  bound  in  point 
of  honor  to  perform  before  the  next  bout.  "As  we  play'd 
pretty  equally, "  says  Franklin,  "we  thus  beat  one  another 
into  that  language."  With  a  little  painstaking,  he 
afterwards  acquired  enough  Spanish  to  read  Spanish 
books  too.  Then  it  was  that,  after  acquiring  this  knowl- 
edge of  French,  Italian  and  Spanish,  he  was  surprised  to 
find  on  looking  over  a  Latin  testament  that  he  had  so 
much  more  familiarity  with  Latin  than  he  imagined. 
This  encouraged  him  to  apply  himself  to  that  language 


140       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

again,  which  he  did  with  the  more  success,  now  that  the 
three  modern  languages  had  smoothed  his  way. 

From  these  circumstances  [he  observes  in  the  Autobiography], 
I  have  thought  that  there  is  some  inconsistency  in  our  common 
mode  of  teaching  languages.  We  are  told  that  it  is  proper  to 
begin  first  with  the  Latin,  and,  having  acquir'd  that,  it  will  be 
more  easy  to  attain  those  modern  languages  which  are  deriv'd 
from  it ;  and  yet  we  do  not  begin  with  the  Greek,  in  order  more 
easily  to  acquire  the  Latin.  It  is  true  that,  if  you  can  clamber 
and  get  to  the  top  of  a  staircase  without  using  the  steps,  you 
will  more  easily  gain  them  in  descending;  but  certainly,  if 
you  begin  with  the  lowest  you  will  with  more  ease  ascend  to 
the  top;  and  I  would,  therefore  offer  it  to  the  consideration  of 
those  who  superintend  the  education  of  our  youth,  whether 
since  many  of  those  who  begin  with  the  Latin  quit  the  same 
after  spending  some  years  without  having  made  any  great 
proficiency,  and  what  they  have  learnt  becomes  almost  useless, 
so  that  their  time  has  been  lost,  it  would  not  have  been  better 
to  have  begun  with  the  French,  proceeding  to  the  Italian, 
etc. ;  for,  tho\  after  spending  the  same  time,  they  should  quit 
the  study  of  languages  and  never  arrive  at  the  Latin,  they 
would,  however,  have  acquired  another  tongue  or  two,  that, 
being  in  modern  use,  might  be  serviceable  to  them  in  common 
life. 

Even  if  some  design  for  the  benefit  of  the  public  did  not 
originate  with  Franklin,  it  was  likely  to  fall  back  ulti- 
mately upon  him  for  success.  When  Dr.  Thomas  Bond 
undertook  to  establish  a  hospital  in  Philadelphia,  he  was 
compelled  by  the  chariness  with  which  his  requests  for 
subscriptions  were  received,  before  it  was  known  how 
Franklin  felt  about  the  project,  to  come  to  Franklin  with 
the  admission  that  he  had  found  that  to  put  any  such 
public  project  through  in  Philadelphia  it  was  necessary  to 
enlist  his  support.  The  response  was  not  only  a  sub- 
scription by  Franklin  but  also  the  inevitable  appeal  from  his 
hand,  pointing  out  the  need  for  the  hospital.      After  a 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    141 

stroke  from  that  wand,  the  rock  began  to  yield  water  more 
abundantly,  but  not  so  copiously  that  Franklin  did  not 
see  that  legislative  aid  was  necessary  as  well  as  private 
liberality.  The  country  voters,  as  is  usual  still  in  such 
cases  in  America,  were  inclined  to  think  that  the  towns- 
folk were  enjoying  more  than  their  just  share  of  the  bless- 
ings of  civil  society.  They  alleged  that  the  hospital 
would  be  of  exclusive  benefit  to  the  city,  and  even  doubted 
whether  the  movement  met  with  the  general  approval  of 
the  townsfolk  themselves.  Franklin's  claim  that  two 
thousand  pounds  would  be  raised  by  voluntary  subscrip- 
tions they  regarded  as  highly  extravagant.  This  was 
cue  enough  for  his  quick  wit.  A  bill  was  introduced  by 
him  into  the  General  Assembly  providing  that,  when  the 
private  contributors  had  organized  under  the  charter 
granted  by  it,  and  had  raised  two  thousand  pounds  by 
voluntary  subscription,  for  the  free  maintenance  of  the 
sick  poor  in  the  hospital,  then  the  Speaker,  upon  that  fact 
being  certified  to  his  satisfaction,  should  draw  his  warrant 
on  the  Treasurer  of  the  Province  for  the  payment  of  two 
thousand  pounds,  in  two  yearly  payments,  to  the  treasurer 
of  the  hospital,  to  be  applied  to  its  establishment.  With 
the  lubricant  supplied  by  this  timely  condition,  the  bill 
slid  smoothly  down  all  the  legislative  grooves.  Even  the 
sincerest  support  of  a  good  legislative  measure  is  not  more 
ardent  to  all  appearances  than  the  specious  support 
sometimes  given  to  such  a  measure  by  a  member  of  the 
Legislature  who  is  opposed  to  it  but  sees,  or  thinks  he 
sees,  that  it  will  never  become  a  law,  even  though  he 
should  vote  for  it.  The  opponents  of  Franklin's  bill, 
conceiving  that  they  had  a  chance  to  acquire  the  credit  of 
generosity  without  paying  the  pecuniary  penalty,  agreed 
to  its  enactment,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  condition, 
by  affording  to  private  subscribers  the  prospect  of  having 
their  contributions  practically  doubled  from  the  public 
purse,  furnished  them  with  an  additional  motive  to  give. 


142       Benjamin  Franklin,  Self-Revealed 

The  private  contributions  even  exceeded  the  sum  fixed 
by  the  condition,  and  the  credit  with  which  the  legislative 
adversaries  of  the  bill  had  to  content  themselves  was  not 
that  of  deceitful  but  of  real  bounty.  M I  do  not  remember 
any  of  my  political  manoeuvres, "  Franklin  complacently 
declares  in  the  Autobiography,  "the  success  of  which  gave 
me  at  the  time  more  pleasure,  or  wherein,  after  thinking 
of  it,  I  more  easily  excus'd  myself  for  having  made  some 
use  of  cunning. "  We  experience  no  difficulty  in  condon- 
ing this  cunning  when  we  realize  that  its  fruit  was  the 
Pennsylvania  Hospital,  which,  after  many  years  of  rare 
usefulness,  is  still  one  of  the  chief  institutions  of  Philadel- 
phia. It  is  gratifying  to  feel  that  its  history  has  not  been 
unworthy  of  the  admirable  inscription  which  Franklin 
wrote  for  its  corner-stone: 

In  the  year  of  Christ  MDCCLV,  George  the  Second  happily 
reigning  (for  he  sought  the  happiness  of  his  people),  Phila- 
delphia flourishing  (for  its  inhabitants  were  public  spirited), 
this  building,  by  the  bounty  of  the  government,  and  of  many 
private  persons,  was  piously  founded  for  the  relief  of  the  sick 
and  miserable.    May  the  God  of  Mercies  bless  the  undertaking. 

The  Reverend  Gilbert  Tennent,  one  of  whose  sermons 
caused  Whitefield  to  say,  ''Never  before  heard  I  such  a 
searching  sermon;  he  is  a  son  of  thunder,  and  does  not 
regard  the  face  of  man, "  was  not  so  fortunate  as  Dr.  Bond 
when  he  asked  Franklin  to  assist  him  in  obtaining  sub- 
scriptions for  the  erection  of  a  new  meeting-house  in 
Philadelphia,  for  the  use  of  a  congregation  drawn  from 
among  the  Presbyterians,  who  were  originally  disciples  of 
Whitefield.  Franklin  says  that  he  absolutely  refused  to 
do  so  because  he  was  unwilling  to  make  himself  disagree- 
able to  his  fellow-citizens  by  soliciting  contributions  from 
them  too  frequently.  The  truth  in  part,  we  suspect,  was 
that  his  zealous  interest  was  not  easily  excited  in  any 
meeting-house  where  even  a  missionary  sent  by  the  Mufti 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    143 

of  Constantinople  to  preach  Mohammedanism  to  the 
people  of  Philadelphia  would  not  find  a  pulpit  at  his  ser- 
vice. But,  if  this  incident  has  any  general  significance, 
it  may  be  accepted  as  evidence  that,  though  Franklin 
might  contribute  nothing  else  upon  such  an  occasion,  he 
was  prepared  to  contribute  a  good  joke.  When  Tennent 
found  that  he  could  get  no  other  kind  of  assistance  from 
him,  he  asked  him  to  give  him  at  least  his  advice.  What 
followed  would  suffer  in  telling  if  not  told  as  the  Auto- 
biography tells  it: 

That  I  will  readily  do  [said  Franklin],  and,  in  the  first  place, 
I  advise  you  to  apply  to  all  those  whom  you  know  will  give 
something;  next,  to  those  whom  you  are  uncertain  whether 
they  will  give  anything  or  not,  and  show  them  the  list  of  those 
who  have  given;  and,  lastly,  do  not  neglect  those  who  you  are 
sure  will  give  nothing,  for  in  some  of  them  you  may  be  mis- 
taken. He  laugh'd  and  thank'd  me,  and  said  he  would  take 
my  advice.  He  did  so,  for  he  ask'd  of  everybody,  and  he 
obtain'd  a  much  larger  sum  than  he  expected,  with  which  he 
erected  the  capacious  and  very  elegant  meeting-house  that 
stands  in  Arch  Street. 

Other  services  rendered  by  Franklin  to  Philadelphia 
related  to  the  better  paving  and  lighting  of  its  streets. 
These  streets  were  laid  out  with  great  regularity,  but,  being 
wholly  unpaved,  were  mere  quagmires  in  winter  and 
stifling  stretches  of  dust  in  summer.  So  bad  was  their 
condition  as  a  rule  that  Philadelphia  came  to  be  known 
among  the  country  people  around  it  as  "Filthy-dirty." 
Franklin,  when  he  lived  near  the  Jersey  Market,  witnessed 
with  concern  the  miserable  plight  of  its  patrons  as  they 
waded  about  on  either  side  of  it  in  mire  deep  enough  to 
have  prompted  the  observation  of  Napoleon,  based  upon 
his  campaigns  in  Poland,  that  mud  should  be  accounted  a 
fifth  element.  A  step  was  taken  when  a  stretch  of  ground 
down  the  middle  of  the  market  was  paved  with  brick. 


144        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

This  offered  a  firm  footing,  when  once  attained,  but, 
before  a  pedestrian  could  attain  it,  he  might  be  overshoes 
in  wet  clay.  By  tongue  and  pen,  Franklin  at  length 
succeeded  in  having  the  spaces  between  the  market  and 
the  foot  pavements  of  the  streets  flanking  it  laid  with 
stone.  The  result  was  that  for  a  season  a  market  woman 
could  reach  the  market  dry-shod,  but,  in  the  course  of 
time,  the  pavements  became  loaded  with  mud  shaken  off 
the  wheels  of  passing  vehicles,  and  this  mud,  after  being 
thus  deposited,  was  allowed,  for  lack  of  street  cleaners,  to 
remain  where  it  fell.  Here  was  an  inviting  situation, 
indeed,  for  such  a  municipal  housewife  as  Franklin. 
Having  hunted  up  a  poor,  industrious  man,  who  was 
willing  to  contract  for  the  sum  of  sixpence  per  month, 
per  house,  to  sweep  up  and  carry  away  the  dirt  in  front  of 
the  houses  abutting  on  these  pavements,  he  wrote  and 
published  a  paper  setting  forth  the  marked  advantages 
to  the  neighborhood  that  would  result  from  such  a  small 
expenditure — the  reduced  amount  of  mud  that  people 
would  carry  around  on  their  shoes,  the  readier  access  that 
customers  would  have  to  the  shops  near  the  market, 
freedom  from  wind-borne  dust  and  other  kindred  benefits 
not  likely  to  escape  the  attention  of  a  man  to  whom  even 
the  dust  of  unpaved  streets  suggested  the  following 
reflections  in  the  Autobiography: 

Human  felicity  is  produced  not  so  much  by  great  pieces  of 
good  fortune  that  seldom  happen,  as  by  little  advantages  that 
occur  every  day.  Thus,  if  you  teach  a  poor  young  man  to 
shave  himself,  and  keep  his  razor  in  order,  you  may  contribute 
more  to  the  happiness  of  his  life  than  in  giving  him  a  thousand 
guineas.  The  money  may  be  soon  spent,  the  regret  only 
remaining  of  having  foolishly  consumed  it;  but  in  the  other 
case,  he  escapes  the  frequent  vexation  of  waiting  for  barbers, 
and  of  their  sometimes  dirty  fingers,  offensive  breaths,  and 
dull  razors;  he  shaves  when  most  convenient  to  him,  and 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    145 

enjoys  daily  the  pleasure  of  its .  being  done  with  a  good 
instrument. 

A  copy  of  the  paper  was  sent  to  each  house  affected  by 
its  proposals,  every  householder  agreed  to  pay  his  six- 
pence, and  the  sense  of  comfort  experienced  by  the  entire 
population  of  Philadelphia  in  the  more  commodious  use 
of  the  market  prepared  their  minds  for  the  bill  which 
Franklin  later  introduced  into  the  Assembly  providing 
for  the  paving  of  the  whole  city.  He  was  on  the  point 
of  embarking  on  his  second  voyage  to  England  when  this 
was  done,  and  the  bill  was  not  passed  until  after  he  was 
gone,  and  then  with  an  alteration  in  his  method  of  assess- 
ing the  paving  cost  which  his  judgment  did  not  deem  an 
improvement;  but  the  bill  as  passed  contained  a  further 
provision  for  lighting  as  well  as  paving  the  streets  of 
Philadelphia  which  he  did  deem  a  great  improvement. 
The  merit  of  first  suggesting  the  hospital  Franklin  is 
studious  to  tell  us,  though  ascribed  to  him,  was  due  to 
Dr.  Bond.  So  likewise  he  is  quick  to  admit  that  the  honor 
of  giving  the  first  impulse  to  municipal  lighting  in  Phila- 
delphia did  not  belong  to  him,  as  had  been  supposed,  but 
to  John  Clifton,  who  had  placed  a  private  lamp  at  his  own 
door.  Franklin  simply  followed  Clifton's  example;  but, 
when  the  city  began  to  light  its  streets,  his  fertile  mind  did 
bring  forward  a  novel  idea  which  proved  a  highly  useful 
one.  Instead  of  the  globe's  imported  from  London  which 
became  so  black  and  opaque  from  smoke  for  lack  of  air, 
when  the  lamps  were  lighted,  that  they  had  to  be  cleaned 
every  day,  and  which,  moreover,  were  totally  wrecked  by 
a  single  blow,  he  suggested  that  the  coverings  for  the  city 
lamps  should  be  composed  of  four  flat  panes,  with  a  long 
funnel  above  and  inlets  below  for  the  free  circulation  of  air. 
The  result  was  a  covering  that  remained  untarnished  until 
morning  and  was  not  involved  in  complete  ruin  by  a  single 
fracture. 


VOL.  I— 10 


146       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Such  were  some  of  the  principal  achievements  of 
Franklin  for  the  benefit  of  Philadelphia.  It  is  not  easy 
to  magnify  unduly  their  significance  when  we  bear  in 
mind  that  they  were  all  crowded  into  a  period  of  some 
thirty  years  during  the  greater  part  of  which  he  was  faith- 
fully heeding  Poor  Richard's  maxim,  "Keep  thy  shop  and 
thy  shop  will  keep  thee";  to  say  nothing  of  the  claims 
upon  his  time  of  political  duties  and  scientific  studies  and 
experiments.  Franklin  was  not  the  Romulus  of  Phila- 
delphia; nor  was  he  its  Augustus,  who  found  it  of  brick 
and  left  it  of  marble.  There  was  solid  brick  enough  in 
the  structure  of  American  colonial  life,  but  little  marble. 
However,  it  can  at  least  be  said  of  him  that  rarely  has 
any  single  private  individual,  with  no  great  fortune,  and 
with  no  control  over  the  public  purse  except  what  is 
conferred  by  the  favor  of  public  opinion  won  by  personal 
intelligence  and  public  spirit,  laid  the  foundations  of  so 
much  that  was  of  lasting  and  increasing  utility  to  an 
infant  community  destined  to  become  one  of  the  populous 
and  opulent  cities  of  the  world.  In  how  many  other 
respects  his  sympathy  with  human  interests  in  their 
broader  relations  made  its  influence  felt  in  Colonial 
America  we  can  only  conjecture,  but  in  many  ways,  in 
addition  to  those  already  mentioned,  its  fructifying 
results  have  been  brought  home  to  us.  It  was  at  his 
instance  that  the  merchants  of  Philadelphia  sent  the 
ship  Argo  to 'the  Arctics  to  discover  a  Northwest  Passage. 
Kalm,  the  Swedish  botanist,  when  he  came  to  Pennsyl- 
vania, found  in  him  a  most  helpful  friend  and  patron. 
He  labored  untiringly  to  obtain  for  Bartram,  the  American 
naturalist,  the  recognition  which  he  richly  merited.  One 
of  the  proudest  days  of  his  life  was  when  his  eager  exer- 
tions in  behalf  of  silk  culture  in  Pennsylvania  were 
rewarded  by  the  knowledge  that  the  Queen  of  England 
had  not  only  graciously  condescended  to  accept  a  sample 
of  Pennsylvania  silk  tendered  to  her  by  him  but  proposed 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    147 

to  wear  it  in  the  form  of  a  dress.  During  his  third  sojourn 
in  England,  the  hospital  at  home  was  frequently  reminded 
of  the  strength  of  his  concern  for  its  welfare  by  gifts  and 
suggestions  more  valuable  than  gifts.  To  him  was  en- 
trusted the  commission  of  purchasing  a  telescope  and 
other  instruments  for  the  Astronomical  School  at  Harvard 
College.  To  the  library  of  Harvard  he  occasionally  for- 
warded parcels  of  books,  either  his  own  gifts  or  gifts 
from  his  friends.  In  addition  to  his  zealous  efforts  in  the 
latter  part  of  his  life  in  behalf  of  negro  emancipation  and 
the  relief  of  the  free  blacks,  he  was  for  several  years  one 
of  the  associates  charged  with  the  management  of  the 
Bray  Fund  for  the  conversion  of  negroes  in  the  British 
plantations.  He  was  also  a  trustee  of  the  Society  for  the 
benefit  of  poor  Germans,  one  of  the  objects  of  which  was 
the  establishment  of  English  schools  in  the  German  com- 
munities which  had  become  so  numerous  in  Pennsylvania. 
It  was  high  time  that  this  object  should  receive  the  atten- 
tion of  the  Englishry  of  the  province  as  one  of  his  letters 
indicates. 

I  remember  [he  said  in  1753  in  a  letter  to  Richard  Jackson] 
when  they  [the  Germans]  modestly  declined  intermeddling  in 
our  Elections,  but  now  they  come  in  Droves  and  carry  all 
before  them,  except  in  one  or  two  Counties. 

Few  of  their  Children  in  the  Country  learn  English.  They 
import  many  Books  from  Germany;  and  of  the  six  Printing- 
Houses  in  the  Province,  two  are  entirely  German,  two  half 
German  half  English,  and  but  two  entirely  English.  They 
have  one  German  Newspaper,  and  one  half-German.  Ad- 
vertisements, intended  to  be  general,  are  now  printed  in  Dutch 
and  English.  The  Signs  in  our  Streets  have  Inscriptions  in 
both  Languages,  and  in  some  places  only  German.  They 
begin  of  late  to  make  all  their  Bonds  and  other  legal  Instru- 
ments in  their  own  Language,  which  (though  I  think  it  ought 
not  to  be)  are  allowed  good  in  our  Courts,  where  the  German 
Business  so  increases,  that  there  is  continued  need  of  Inter- 


148       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

preters;  and  I  suppose  in  a  few  Years  they  will  also  be  neces- 
sary in  the  Assembly  to  tell  one  half  of  our  Legislators  what 
the  other  half  say. * 

As  we  are  said  to  be  indebted  to  Jefferson  for  the  in- 
troduction into  America  of  the  Lombardy  poplar  so  it  is 
said  that  we  are  indebted  to  Franklin  for  the  domestication 
of  the  yellow  willow  so  useful  in  the  manufacture  of  wicker- 
work.  The  story  is  that  his  observant  eye  noted  the 
sprouts,  which  a  willow  basket  from  abroad  had  put  forth, 
when  refreshed  by  the  water  of  a  creek  into  which  it  had 
been  tossed,  and  that  he  was  at  pains  to  plant  some  of 
them  on  a  lot  in  Philadelphia.  Apparently,  he  was  the 
first  person,  too,  to  introduce  the  rhubarb  plant  into 
America.  He  obtained  seed  of  the  broom-corn  on  one  of 
his  visits  to  Virginia,  and  took  care  to  disseminate  it  in 
Pennsylvania  and  other  Colonies.  When  the  Pennsyl- 
vania farmers  were  skeptical  about  the  value  of  plaster, 
he  framed  in  that  substance  on  the  surface  of  a  conspicuous 
field  the  words:  "this  has  been  plastered,  "  which  were 
soon  rewritten  in  vegetation  that  rose  legibly  above  the 
general  level  of  its  surroundings.  One  of  his  suggestions 
was  an  "office  of  insurance"  on  the  mutual  assessment 

1  In  an  earlier  letter  to  James  Parker,  Franklin  commented  on  the 
"Dutch"  immigration  into  Pennsylvania  very  much  as  a  Calif ornian 
was  afterwards  in  the  habit  of  doing  on  the  Chinese  immigration  to  our 
Pacific  coast.  The  "Dutch"  under-lived,  and  were  thereby  enabled,  he 
said,  "to  under-work  and  under-sell  the  English."  In  his  essay  on  The 
Increase  of  Mankind,  he  asked:  "Why  should  the  Palatine  Boors  be  suffered 
to  swarm  into  our  Settlements,  and,  by  herding  together,  establish  their 
Language  and  Manners,  to  the  Exclusion  of  ours?"  Expressions  in  his 
letter  to  Jackson,  which  we  do  not  mention  in  our  text,  make  it  manifest 
enough  that  he  gravely  doubted  whether  the  German  population  of  Penn- 
sylvania could  be  relied  upon  to  assist  actively  in  the  defence  of  the 
Province  in  the  event  of  its  being  invaded  by  the  French.  However,  after 
suggesting  some  means  of  improving  the  situation,  he  is  compelled  to 
conclude  with  these  words:  "I  say,  I  am  not  against  the  Admission  of 
Germans  in  general,  for  they  have  their  Virtues.  Their  Industry  and  Fru- 
gality are  exemplary.  They  are  excellent  Husbandmen;  and  contribute 
greatly  to  the  Improvement  of  a  Country." 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    149 

plan  against  losses  from  storms,  blights,  insects,  etc., 
suffered  by  farmers.  Among  his  essays  is  a  concise  but 
highly  instructive  one  on  Maize,  or  Indian  Corn,  which  was 
well  calculated  to  make  known  to  the  world  a  plant  now 
hardly  less  prized  by  the  American  for  its  general  useful- 
ness than  the  date-palm  is  by  the  Arab.  John  Adams 
informs  us  in  his  Diary  that,  on  one  occasion,  when  in 
Massachusetts,  Franklin  mentioned  that  Rhenish  grape- 
vines had  been  recently  planted  at  Philadelphia,  and  had 
succeeded  very  well,  whereupon  his  host,  Edmund  Quincy, 
expressed  the  wish  that  he  could  plant  some  in  his  own 
garden.  A  few  weeks  later  Quincy  received  a  bundle  of 
the  Rhenish  slips  by  sea  from  Franklin,  and  a  little  later 
another  by  post. 

Thus  [diarizes  Adams,  at  the  time  a  young  man  of  but 
twenty-four,  when  the  difficulty  with  which  the  slips  had  been 
procured  by  Franklin  came  to  his  knowledge]  he  took  the 
trouble  to  hunt  over  the  city  (Philadelphia)  and  not  finding 
vines  there,  he  sends  seventy  miles  into  the  country,  and  then 
sends  one  bundle  by  water,  and,  lest  they  should  miscarry, 
another  by  land,  to  a  gentleman  whom  he  owed  nothing,  and 
was  but  little  acquainted  with,  purely  for  the  sake  of  doing 
good  in  the  world  by  propagating  the  Rhenish  vines  through 
these  provinces.  And  Mr.  Quincy  has  some  of  them  now 
growing  in  his  garden.  This  is  an  instance,  too,  of  his  amazing 
capacity  for  business,  his  memory  and  resolution:  amidst  so 
much  business  as  counselor,  postmaster,  printer,  so  many 
private  studies,  and  so  many  public  avocations  too,  to  re- 
member such  a  transient  hint  and  exert  himself  so  in  answer 
to  it,  is  surprising. 

If  Adams  had  only  known  Franklin  better  at  the  time 
when  these  words  were  penned,  which  was  long  before  his 
analysis  of  Franklin's  motives  could  be  jaundiced  by 
jealousy  or  wounded  self-love,  he  might  have  added  that 
this  incident  was  also  an  illustration  of  that  unfailing  good- 
nature which  made  the  friendship  of  Franklin  an  ever- 


150        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

bubbling  well-spring  of  kindly  offices.  "Accept  my  kind 
offices  to  thy  other  children  as  the  only  return  in  my  power 
for  thy  continual  favors  to  me, "  one  of  the  petitions  in  the 
"little  prayer,"  prefixed  to  Franklin's  manual  of  self- 
discipline,  expressed  an  aspiration  which,  in  addition  to 
more  impressive  forms  of  fulfilment,  was  realized  many 
times  over  in  the  innumerable  small  offerings  of  good 
feeling  that  he  was  in  the  habit  of  laying  from  time  to 
time  upon  the  altar  of  friendship.  In  recounting  the 
benefactions,  which  he  bestowed  upon  his  fellow-creatures 
by  his  public  spirit  and  private  benevolence,  it  is  hard  to 
refrain  from  speculating  as  to  what  he  might  have  ac- 
complished, if  his  wealth  had  only,  like  that  of  Andrew 
Carnegie,  been  commensurate  with  his  wisdom  and 
philanthropic  zeal.  Then,  in  truth,  would  have  been 
united  such  agencies  as  have  not  often  worked  together 
for  the  amelioration  of  human  society.  But  independent 
as  Franklin  was,  according  to  the  pecuniary  standards 
of  Colonial  America,  he  was  in  no  position  to  contribute 
money  lavishly  to  any  generous  object.  When  he  gave  it, 
he  had  to  give  it  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  it  keep  itself 
going  until  it  had  gone  far  by  its  own  mere  cumulative 
energy.  This  is  very  interestingly  brought  out  in  a  letter 
from  him,  when  at  Passy,  to  Benjamin  Webb,  a  distressed 
correspondent,  to  whom  he  was  sending  a  gift  of  ten  louis 
d'ors. 

I  do  not  pretend  [he  said]  to  give  such  a  Sum;  I  only  lend 
it  to  you.  When  you  shall  return  to  your  Country  with  a 
good  Character,  you  cannot  fail  of  getting  into  some  Business, 
that  will  in  time  enable  you  to  pay  all  your  Debts.  In  that 
Case,  when  you  meet  with  another  honest  Man  in  similar 
Distress,  you  must  pay  me  by  lending  this  Sum  to  him; 
enjoining  him  to  discharge  the  Debt  by  a  like  operation,  when 
he  shall  be  able,  and  shall  meet  with  such  another  opportunity. 
I  hope  it  may  thus  go  thro'  many  hands,  before  it  meets  with  a 
Knave  that  will  stop  its  Progress.     This  is  a  trick  of  mine  for 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    151 

doing  a  deal  of  good  with  a  little  money.  I  am  not  rich  enough 
to  afford  much  in  good  works,  and  so  am  obliged  to  be  cunning 
and  make  the  most  of  a  little. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  Webb  was  but  the  first  link  in  the 
golden  chain  which  this  letter  sought  to  fashion. 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  Franklin  also  endeavored 
to  give  even  posthumous  efficacy  to  this  same  idea  of 
economizing  pecuniary  force.  By  a  codicil  to  his  will,  he 
created  two  funds  of  one  thousand  pounds  each,  one  for 
the  benefit  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  town  of  Boston, 
and  the  other  for  the  benefit  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
town  of  Philadelphia.  The  selectmen  and  the  ministers  of 
the  oldest  Episcopalian,  Congregational  and  Presbyterian 
churches  in  Boston  were  to  be  the  trustees  for  the  man- 
agement of  the  Boston  fund,  and  the  City  Corporation 
was  to  manage  the  Philadelphia  fund.  The  amounts 
were  to  be  respectively  lent  in  sums  not  exceeding  sixty 
pounds  sterling,  nor  less  than  fifteen  pounds,  for  any  one 
person,  in  the  discretion  of  the  respective  managers,  to 
such  young  married  artificers,  under  the  age  of  twenty- 
five  years,  as  should  have  served  an  apprenticeship  in 
the  respective  towns  and  have  faithfully  fulfilled  the 
duties  stipulated  for  in  their  indentures,  upon  their  pro- 
ducing certificates  to  their  good  moral  character  from  at 
least  two  respectable  citizens,  and  bonds  executed  by  them- 
selves and  these  citizens,  as  sureties,  for  the  repayment 
of  the  loans  in  ten  equal  annual  instalments,  with  interest 
at  the  rate  of  five  per  cent,  per  annum.  If  there  were  more 
applicants  than  money,  the  proportions,  in  which  the 
sums  would  otherwise  have  been  allotted,  were  to  be 
ratably  diminished  in  such  a  way  that  some  assistance 
would  be  given  to  every  applicant.  As  fast  as  the  sums 
lent  were  repaid,  they  were  again  to  be  lent  out  to  fresh 
borrowers.  If  the  plan  was  faithfully  carried  out  for  one 
hundred  years,  the  fond  projector  calculated  that,  at  the 


152       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

end  of  that  time,  the  Boston,  as  well  as  the  Philadelphia, 
fund,  would  amount  to  one  hundred  and  thirty-one 
thousand  pounds,  of  which  he  would  have  the  managers 
of  the  Boston  fund  lay  out  in  their  discretion  one  hundred 
thousand  pounds  in  public  improvements;  the  remaining 
thirty-one  thousand  pounds  to  be  lent  out  as  the  original 
one  thousand  pounds  was  for  another  hundred  years.  At 
the  end  of  the  second  term,  Franklin  calculated  that, 
mishaps  aside,  the  sum  would  be  four  million  and  sixty- 
one  thousand  pounds  sterling,  of  which  he  bequeathed  one 
million  sixty-one  thousand  pounds  to  the  inhabitants  of 
Boston  absolutely,  and  three  million  pounds  to  the 
Commonwealth  of,  Massachusetts  absolutely;  not  pre- 
suming, he  said,  to  carry  his  views  further.  At  the  end  of 
the  first  one  hundred  years,  if  the  purpose  was  not  already 
executed,  the  City  Corporation  was  to  use  a  part  of  the 
fund  accumulated  for  the  benefit  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Philadelphia  in  piping  the  water  of  Wissahickon  Creek 
into  that  city,  and  the  testator  also  recommended  that  the 
Schuylkill  should  be  made  completely  navigable.  In 
other  respects  the  conditions  of  the  two  gifts  were  the 
same.  An  English  lawyer  characterized  the  famous  will 
by  which  Peter  Thellusson  tried  to  circumvent  the  legal 
rule  against  perpetuities  as  "posthumous  avarice."  If 
Franklin,  too,  kept  his  hand  clenched  after  he  left  the 
world,  it  was  not  in  the  vainglory  of  family  pride  nor  from 
the  mere  sordid,  uncalculating  love  of  treasured  wealth, 
but  only  that  he  might  open  it  as  " bounty's  instrument," 
when  overflowingly  full,  for  the  purpose  of  conferring 
upon  men  a  far  richer  largess  of  beneficence  than  it  had 
been  capable  of  conferring  in  life.  Changes  in  industrial 
conditions  defeated  his  intentions  with  respect  to  artificers, 
and  the  Philadelphia  fund  proved  far  less  crescive  than 
the  Boston  one,  but  both  have  proved  enough  so  to 
illustrate  the  procreative  quality  of  money  upon  which 
Franklin  was  so  fond  of  dilating.     The  Boston  fund, 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    153 

including  the  sum  applied  at  the  end  of  the  first  one 
hundred  years  to  the  use  of.  Franklin  Union,  amounted 
on  January  1,  1913,  to  $546,811.39,  and  the  Philadelphia 
fund,  including  the  amount  applied  to  the  use  of  Franklin 
Institute,  amounted  on  January  1,  1913,  to  $186,807.06. 
Poor  Richard  certainly  selected  a  most  effective  way  this 
time  for  renewing  the  reminder  with  which  he  ended  his 
Hints  for  those  that  would  be  Rich. 

"  A  Penny  sav'd  is  Twopence  clear 
A  Pin  a  Day  is  a  groat  a  year. " 

With  the  expanding  horizon,  which  came  to  Franklin 
in  1757,  when  he  was  drawn  off  into  the  world-currents 
of  his  time,  came  also  larger  opportunities  for  promoting 
the  welfare  of  the  race.  There  was  a  double  reason  why  he 
should  not  be  tardy  in  availing  himself  of  these  opportuni- 
ties. He  was  both  by  nature  and  training  at  once  a 
philosopher  and  a  philanthropist.  "God  grant,"  he 
fervently  exclaimed  in  a  letter  to  David  Hartley  in  1789, 
"that  not  only  the  Love  of  Liberty,  but  a  thorough  Knowl- 
edge of  the  Rights  of  Man,  may  pervade  all  the  Nations 
of  the  Earth,  so  that  a  Philosopher  may  set  his  Foot 
anywhere  on  its  Surface,  and  say  'This  is  my  country/  " 
To  Joseph  Huey  he  wrote  in  the  letter,  from  which  we 
have  already  freely  quoted,  that  the  only  thanks  he  de- 
sired for  a  kindness  which  he  had  shown  the  former  was 
that  he  should  always  be  equally  ready  to  serve  any  other 
person  who  might  need  his  assistance,  and  so  let  good 
offices  go  round;  "for  Mankind,"  Franklin  added,  "are 
all  of  a  Family."  During  his  third  sojourn  in  England, 
he  entered  earnestly  into  a  scheme  for  supplying  the 
islands  of  Acpy-nomawee  and  Tovy-poennammoo,  "called 
in  the  maps  New  Zealand,"  which  contained  no  useful 
quadrupeds  but  dogs,  with  fowls,  hogs,  goats,  cattle,  corn, 
iron  and  other  commodities  of  civilized  life.     The  portion 


154       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

of  the  appeal  for  pecuniary  aid  for  this  purpose,  which  was 
borrowed  from  his  pen,  after  beginning  with  the  statement 
that  Britain  itself  was  said  to  have  originally  produced 
nothing  but  sloes,  adapts  itself,  as  all  his  writings  of  this 
kind  usually  did,  to  both  the  unselfish  and  selfish  instincts 
of  his  readers.  It  was  the  obligation,  he  insisted,  of  those, 
who  thought  it  their  duty  to  ask  bread  and  other  blessings 
daily  from  Heaven,  to  show  their  gratitude  to  their  great 
Benefactor  by  the  only  means  in  their  power,  and  that 
was  by  promoting  the  happiness  of  his  other  children. 
Communiter  bona  prof  under  e  Deum  est.  And  then  trade 
always  throve  better  when  carried  on  with  a  people 
possessed  of  the  arts  and  conveniences  of  life  than  with 
naked  savages. 

As  events  moved  along  apace,  and  Franklin  found  him- 
self in  a  world,  once  again  ravaged  and  ensanguined  by 
war,  the  triple  birth  of  human  folly,  greed  and  atrocity, 
his  heart,  irrevocably  enlisted  as  it  was  in  the  American 
cause,  went  out  into  one  generous  effort  after  another  to 
establish  at  least  a  few  peaceful  sanctuaries  where  the 
nobler  impulses  and  aims  of  human  nature  might  be  safe 
from  the  destructive  rage  of  its  malignant  passions.  In 
1779,  when  our  Minister  to  France,  he  issued  instructions 
to  the  captains  of  all  armed  ships  holding  commissions 
from  Congress  not  to  molest,  in  any  manner,  the  famous 
English  navigator,  Captain  Cook,  on  his  return  from  the 
voyage  of  discovery  into  unknown  seas  upon  which  he 
had  been  dispatched  before  the  Revolutionary  War. 
This  act  was  handsomely  acknowledged  by  the  British 
Government.  One  of  the  gold  medals,  struck  in  honor  of 
Captain  Cook,  was  presented  to  Franklin  by  the  hand  of 
Sir  Joseph  Banks,  the  President  of  the  Royal  Society, 
and  the  British  Admiralty  Board  also  sent  him  a  copy  of 
the  Captain's  book,  with  its  "elegant  collection  of  plates, " 
and  a  very  polite  letter  from  Lord  Howe  stating  that  the 
gift  was  made  with  the  express  approval  of  the  King.    In 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    155 

the  same  year  similar  instructions  were  given  by  Franklin 
for  the  protection  of  the  vessel  that  was  that  year  to 
transport  the  supplies  which  were  annually  conveyed  from 
Europe  to  the  Moravian  Mission  on  the  coast  of  Labrador. 
And  later  the  same  aegis  was  likewise  extended  over  the  ship 
which  was  expected  to  bear  provisions  and  clothing  from 
the  charitable  citizens  of  Dublin  for  the  relief  of  suffering 
in  the  West  Indies.  Of  the  rule  that  "free  ships  shall 
make  free  goods, "  Franklin  said  in  a  letter  to  J.  Torris,  an 
agent  for  American  cruisers  at  Dunkirk,  "  This  rule  is 
itself  so  reasonable,  and  of  a  nature  to  be  so  beneficial 
to  mankind,  that  I  cannot  but  wish  it  may  become 
general."  Nor  did  he  stop  there.  In  this  letter,  such 
was  his  confidence  that  Congress  would  approve  the  new 
rule  that  he  notified  Torris  that,  until  he  had  received  its 
orders  on  the  subject,  he  should  condemn  no  more  English 
goods  found  by  American  cruisers  in  Dutch  vessels,  unless 
contraband  of  war.  How  unqualifiedly  he  was  disposed 
to  recognize  the  neutrality  of  all  such  goods  is  evidenced 
by  other  letters  of  his,  too,  written  when  he  was  in  France. 
But  to  him  also  belongs  the  peculiar  glory  of  insisting  that 
non-combatants  should  be  exempt  from  the  lamentable 
penalties  of  war. 

I  approve  much  [he  said  in  a  letter  in  1780  to  Charles  W.  F. 
Dumas]  of  the  Principles  of  the  Confederacy  of  the  Neutral 
Powers,  and  am  not  only  for  respecting  the  Ships  as  the 
House  of  a  Friend,  tho'  containing  the  Goods  of  an  Enemy, 
but  I  even  wish  for  the  sake  of  humanity  that  the  Law  of 
Nations  may  be  further  improv'd,  by  determining,  that,  even 
in  time  of  War,  all  those  kinds  of  People,  who  are  employ'd 
in  procuring  subsistence  for  the  Species,  or  in  exchanging  the 
Necessaries  or  Conveniences  of  Life,  which  are  for  the  com- 
mon Benefit  of  Mankind,  such  as  Husbandmen  on  their 
lands,  fishermen  in  their  Barques,  and  traders  in  unarm'd 
Vessels,  shall  be  permitted  to  prosecute  their  several  innocent 
and  useful  Employments  without  interruption  or  Molestation, 


156       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

and  nothing  taken  from  them,  even  when  wanted  by  an 
Enemy,  but  on  paying  a  fair  Price  for  the  same. 

This  principle,  as  well  as  a  stipulation  against  privateer- 
ing, was  actually  made  a  part  of  the  treaty  of  amity  and 
commerce  between  Prussia  and  the  United  States,  which 
was  signed  shortly  before  Franklin  returned  to  America 
from  the  French  Mission,  and  it  was  not  for  the  lack 
of  effort  on  his  part  that  similar  articles  were  not  inserted 
in  all  the  treaties  between  the  United  States  and  other 
European  countries  that  were  entered  into  about  the 
same  time.   . 

For  the  practice  of  privateering  he  cherished  a  feeling 
of  intense  abhorrence.  It  behoved  merchants,  he  wrote  to 
Benjamin  Vaughan,  "to  consider  well  of  the  justice  of 
a  War,  before  they  voluntarily  engage  a  Gang  of  Ruffians 
to  attack  their  Fellow  Merchants  of  a  neighbouring 
Nation,  to  plunder  them  of  their  Property,  and  perhaps 
ruin  them  and  their  Families,  if  they  yield  it ;  or  to  wound, 
maim,  or  murder  them,  if  they  endeavour  to  defend  it. 
Yet  these  Things  are  done  by  Christian  Merchants, 
whether  a  War  be  just  or  unjust;  and  it  can  hardly  be 
just  on  both  sides.  They  are  done  by  English  and 
American  Merchants,  who,  nevertheless,  complain  of 
private  Thefts,  and  hang  by  Dozens  the  Thieves  they 
have  taught  by  their  own  Example."  Rarely  have  the 
injurious  results  of  privateering  been  presented  with  more 
force  than  they  were  by  Franklin  in  his  Propositions 
Relative  to  Privateering,  sent  to  Richard  Oswald — the 
industrial  loss  involved  in  the  withdrawal  of  so  many  men 
from  honest  labor,  "who,  besides,  spend  what  they  get  in 
riot,  drunkenness,  and  debauchery,  lose  their  habits  of 
industry,  are  rarely  fit  for  any  sober  business  after  a 
peace,  and  serve  only  to  increase  the  number  of  highway- 
men and  housebreakers";  and  the  pecuniary  ruin  into 
which  their  employers  are  drawn  by  inability,  after  the 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    157 

enjoyment  of  rapidly  acquired  wealth,  to  adjust  the 
habits  formed  by  it  to  normal  conditions.  "A  just 
punishment, "  Franklin  adds,  "for  their  having  wantonly 
and  unfeelingly  ruined  many  honest,  innocent  traders  and 
their  families,  whose  subsistence  was  employed  in  serving 
the  common  interests  of  mankind/ *  And  after  all,  he 
further  said,  as  in  the  case  of  other  lotteries,  while  a  few 
of  the  adventurers  secured  prizes,  the  mass,  for  reasons 
that  he  stated  very  clearly,  were  losers. 

We  have  already  seen  how  strongly  his  mind  leaned 
in  the  direction  of  arbitration  as  the  proper  method  for 
settling  international  differences. 

But  a  grave  error  it  would  be  to  think  of  Franklin  as 
merely  a  wise,  placid,  humane  Quaker,  or  as  simply  a 
benignant,  somewhat  visionary  Friend  of  Man.  He  knew 
what  the  world  ought  to  be,  and  might  be  made  to  be, 
but  he  also  knew  what  the  world  was,  and  was  likely  for 
some  time  to  be.  He  resembled  the  Quaker  in  his  shrewd 
capacity  to  take  care  of  himself,  in  his  love  of  thrift  and  of 
all  that  appertains  to  the  rational  and  useful  side  of  life, 
and  especially  in  his  broad,  unreserved,  human  sympa- 
thies. It  was  for  this  reason  that,  though  not  a  Quaker 
himself,  he  could  usually  count  with  more  or  less  certainty 
upon  the  support  of  Quakers  in  his  public  undertakings 
and  political  struggles.  But  rigid,  dogged  scruples  like 
those  which  made  an  effort  in  Franklin's  time  to  coerce 
a  Pennsylvania  Quaker  into  taking  up  arms  as  impotent, 
as  a  rule,  as  blows  upon  an  unresisting  punch-bag  were 
wholly  out  of  keeping  with  such  a  character  as  Franklin's. 
For  all  that  was  best  in  the  enthusiastic  philanthropy  of 
the  French,  too,  he  had  no  little  affinity,  but  what  Lecky 
has  called  his  "pedestrian  intellect"  saved  him  from 
inane  dreams  of  patriarchal  innocence  and  simplicity  in 
a  world  from  which  Roland  was  to  hurry  himself  because 
it  was  too  polluted  with  crime. 

It  was  a  good  story  that  Franklin's  Quaker  friend, 


158       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

James  Logan,  told  of  William  Penn.  He  was  coming  over 
to  Pennsylvania  as  the  Secretary  of  Penn,  when  their 
ship  was  chased  by  an  armed  vessel.  Their  captain 
made  ready  for  an  engagement,  but  said  to  Penn  that  he 
did  not  expect  his  aid  or  that  of  his  Quaker  companions, 
and  that  they  might  retire  to  the  cabin,  which  they  all 
did  except  Logan,  who  remained  on  deck,  and  was  quar- 
tered to  a  gun.  The  supposed  enemy  proved  to  be  a 
friend,  and,  when  this  fact  was  announced  by  Logan  to 
Penn  and  the  other  refugees  below,  Penn  rebuked  him  for 
violating  the  Quaker  principle  of  non-resistance.  Net- 
tled by  being  reproved  before  so  many  persons,  Logan 
replied,  "  I  being  thy  servant,  why  did  thee  not  order  me  to 
come  down?  But  thee  was  willing  enough  that  I  should 
stay  and  help  to  fight  the  ship  when  thee  thought  there  was 
danger.11  Franklin  abhorred  the  Medusa  locks  of  war, 
and  loved  the  fair,  smiling  face  of  peace  as  much  as  any 
Quaker,  but,  when  there  was  peril  to  be  braved,  he  could 
always  be  relied  upon  to  incur  his  share. 

Both  in  point  of  physique  and  manliness  of  spirit  he 
was  well  fitted  for  leadership  and  conflict.  Josiah,  the 
father  of  Franklin,  we  are  told  in  the  Autobiography, 
had  "an  excellent  constitution  of  body,  was  of  middle 
stature,  but  well  set,  and  very  strong."  The  description 
was  true  to  Franklin  himself.  He  is  supposed  to  have 
been  about  five  feet  and  ten  inches  high,  was  robustly 
built,  and,  when  a  printer  at  Watts'  printing  house  in 
London,  could  carry  up  and  down  stairs  in  each  hand  a 
large  form  of  types  which  one  of  his  fellow  printers  could 
carry  only  with  both  hands.  In  his  boyhood  he  was  as 
eager  as  most  healthy-minded  boys  are  to  go  off  to  sea; 
but  his  father  already  had  one  runagate  son,  Josiah  the 
younger,  at  sea,  and  had  no  mind  to  have  another.  How- 
ever, living  as  he  did  near  the  water,  Benjamin  was  much 
in  and  about  it,  and  learnt  early  to  swim  well  and  to 
manage  boats. 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    159 

When  in  a  boat  or  canoe  with  other  boys  [he  says  in  the 
Autobiography],  I  was  commonly  allowed  to  govern,  especially 
in  any  case  of  difficulty;  and  upon  other  occasions  I  was 
generally  a  leader  among  the  boys,  and  sometimes  led  them 
into  scrapes,  of  which  I  will  mention  one  instance,  as  it  shows 
an  early  projecting  public  spirit,  tho'  not  then  justly  conducted. 

He  then  tells  us  how,  under  his  direction,  a  band  of  his 
comrades,  late  in  the  afternoon,  when  no  one  was  about, 
"like  so  many  emmets, "  abstracted  all  the  stones  col- 
lected for  the  foundation  of  a  new  building  and  constructed 
with  them  a  wharf  on  a  quagmire  for  the  convenience  of 
the  marauders  when  fishing.  The  authors  of  the  mischief 
were  discovered.  "Several  of  us,"  says  Franklin,  "were 
corrected  by  our  fathers;  and,  though  I  pleaded  the  useful- 
ness of  the  work,  mine  convinced  me  that  nothing  was 
useful  which  was  not  honest."1 

Another  incident  in  Franklin's  youth,  indicative  of  the 
way  in  which  leadership  was  apt  to  be  conceded  in  mo- 
ments of  perplexity  to  his  hardihood,  is  narrated  in  the 
journal  of  his  first  voyage  from  England  to  America,  and 
arose  when  he  and  two  companions,  after  wandering  about 
the  Isle  of  Wight  until  dark,  were  anxiously  endeavoring 
to  make  their  way  back  across  an  intercepting  creek 
to  their  ship,  the  Berkshire,  which  was  only  awaiting  the 
first  favoring  breeze  to  be  up  and  away.  On  this  occasion, 
he  stripped  to  his  shirt,  and  waded  through  the  waters  of 
the  creek,  and  at  one  time,  through  mud  as  well  up  to  his 
middle,   to  a  boat   staked  nearly  fifty  yards  offshore; 

1  Another  sidelight  upon  the  character  of  Franklin  in  his  boyhood  is 
found  in  connection  with  the  caution  in  regard  to  England  that  he  gave 
to  Robert  Morris  in  1782,  when  the  Revolutionary  War  was  coming  to 
an  end.  "That  nation,"  he  said,  "is  changeable.  And  though  some- 
what humbled  at  present,  a  little  success  may  make  them  as  insolent  as 
ever.  I  remember  that,  when  I  was  a  boxing  boy,  it  was  allowed,  even 
after  an  adversary  said  he  had  enough,  to  give  him  a  rising  blow.  Let 
ours  be  a  douser." 


160       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

the  wind  all  the  while  blowing  very  cold  and  very  hard. 
When  he  reached  the  boat,  it  was  only  to  find  after  an 
hour's  exertions  that  he  could  not  release  it  from  its 
fastenings,  and  that  there  was  nothing  for  him  to  do  but  to 
return  as  he  came.  Then,  just  as  the  unlucky  trio  were 
thinking  of  looking  up  some  haystack  in  which  to  spend 
the  night,  one  of  them  remembered  that  he  had  a  horse- 
shoe in  his  pocket.  Again  the  indomitable  Franklin 
waded  back  to  the  boat,  and  this  time,  by  wrenching  out 
with  the  shoe  the  staple  by  which 'it  was  chained  to  the 
stake,  secured  it,  and  brought  it  ashore  to  his  friends. 
On  its  way  to  the  other  shore,  it  grounded  in  shoal  water, 
and  stuck  so  fast  that  one  of  its  oars  was  broken  in  an 
effort  to  get  it  off.  After  striving  and  struggling  for  half 
an  hour  and  more,  the  party  gave  up  and  sat  down  with 
their  hands  before  them  in  despair.  It  looked  as  if  after 
being  exposed  all  night  to  wind  and  weather,  which  was 
bad,  they  would  be  exposed  the  next  morning  to  the  taunts 
of  the  owner  of  the  boat  and  the  amusement  of  the  whole 
town  of  Yarmouth;  which  was  worse.  However,  when 
their  plight  seemed  utterly  hopeless,  a  happy  thought 
occurred  to  them,  and  Franklin  and  one  of  his  companions, 
having  got  out  into  the  creek  and  thus  lightened  the 
craft,  contrived  to  draw  it  into  deeper  water. 

Still  another  incident  brings  into  clear  relief  the  resolute 
will  of  the  youthful  Franklin.  It  is  told  in  the  Auto- 
biography. He  was  in  a  boat  on  the  Delaware  with  his 
free-thinking  and  deep-drinking  friend,  Collins,  who  had 
acquired  the  habit  of  "sotting  with  brandy, "  and  some 
other  young  men.  Collins  was  in  the  state  pictured  by  one 
or  more  of  the  cant  phrases  descriptive  of  an  inebriate 
condition  which  were  compiled  with  such  painstaking 
thoroughness  by  Franklin  in  his  "Drinker's  Dictionary" 
for  the  Pennsylvania  Gazette.  It  became  Collins'  turn  to 
row,  but  he  refused  to  do  it.  "I  will  be  row'd  home," 
said  Collins.     "We  will  not  row  you,"  said  Franklin. 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    161 

"You  must,  or  stay  all  night  on  the  water  just  as  you 
please,"  said  Collins.  The  others  said:  "Let  us  row; 
what  signifies  it?"  But  Franklin's  mind  was  soured  by 
Collins'  past  misconduct,  and  he  refused  to  do  so.  There- 
upon Collins  swore  that  he  would  make  him  row  or  throw 
him  overboard,  and  advanced  towards  him  and  struck  at 
him.  As  he  did  so,  Franklin  clapped  his  hand  under 
Collins'  crotch,  and,  rising,  pitched  him  headforemost 
into  the  river.  Knowing  that  Collins  was  a  good  swimmer, 
he  felt  little  concern  about  him;  so  the  boat  was  rowed  a 
short  distance  from  Collins,  and  with  a  few  timely  strokes 
removed  slightly  out  of  his  reach  whenever  he  attempted 
to  board  it;  he  being  asked  each  time  whether  he  would 
consent  to  row. 

He  was  ready  to  die  with  vexation  [says  Franklin],  and 
obstinately  would  not  promise  to  row.  However,  seeing  him 
at  last  beginning  to  tire,  we  lifted  him  in  and  brought  him 
home  dripping  wet  in  the  evening.  We  hardly  exchang'd  a 
civil  word  afterwards,  and  a  West  India  captain,  who  had  a 
commission  to  procure  a  tutor  for  the  sons  of  a  gentleman  at 
Barbadoes,  happening  to  meet  with  him,  agreed  to  carry  him 
thither.  He  left  me  then,  promising  to  remit  me  the  first 
money  he  should  receive  in  order  to  discharge  the  debt ;  but 
I  never  heard  of  him  after. 

The  debt  was  for  money  that  Franklin  had  lent  to 
Collins,  when  in  straits  produced  by  his  dissipated  habits, 
out  of  the  vexatious  sum  collected  by  Franklin  for  Mr. 
Vernon,  which  cost  him  so  much  self-reproach  until  re- 
mitted to  that  gentleman. 

The  firmness  exhibited  by  Franklin  on  this  occasion  he 
never  failed  to  exhibit  in  his  later  life  whenever  it  was 
necessary  for  him  to  do  so.  Even  John  Adams,  in  1778, 
though  he  had  worked  himself  up  to  the  point  of  charging 
Franklin  with  downright  indolence  and  with  the  "constant 
policy  never  to  say  'yes*  or  'no'  decidedly  but  when  he 

VOL.   I — II 


162       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

could  not  avoid  it,"  admitted  in  the  same  breath  that 
Franklin  had  "as  determined  a  soul  as  any  man."  If 
anyone  doubts  it,  let  him  read  the  letters  written  by 
Franklin  upon  the  rare  occasions  when  he  felt  that,  as  a 
matter  of  justice  or  sober  self-respect,  he  could  not  escape 
the  duty  of  holding  up  the  mirror  of  candid  speech  to  the 
face  of  misconduct.  On  these  occasions,  his  rebuke  was 
like  a  bitter  draught  administered  in  a  measuring  glass, 
not  a  drop  too  much,  not  a  drop  too  little.  Witness  his 
letter  of  March  12,  1780,  to  Captain  Peter  Landais  in 
reply  to  the  demand  of  that  captain  that  he  should  be 
again  placed  in  command  of  the  Alliance, 

The  demand,  however  [Franklin  wrote],  may  perhaps  be 
made  chiefly  for  the  sake  of  obtaining  a  Refusal,  of  which  you 
seem  the  more  earnestly  desirous  as  the  having  it  to  produce 
may  be  of  service  to  you  in  America.  I  will  not  therefore  deny 
it  to  you,  and  it  shall  be  as  positive  and  clear  as  you  require  it. 
No  one  has  ever  learnt  from  me  the  Opinion  I  formed  of  you 
from  the  Enquiry  made  into  your  conduct.  I  kept  it  entirely 
to  myself.  I  have  not  even  hinted  it  in  my  Letters  to  America, 
because  I  would  not  hazard  giving  to  any  one  a  Bias  to  your 
Prejudice.  By  communicating  a  Part  of  that  Opinion  pri- 
vately to  you  it  can  do  you  no  harm  for  you  may  burn  it.  I 
should  not  give  you  the  pain  of  reading  it  if  your  Demand  did 
not  make  it  necessary.  I  think  you,  then,  so  imprudent,  so 
litigious  and  quarrelsome  a  man,  even  with  your  best  friends, 
that  Peace  and  good  order  and,  consequently,  the  quiet  and 
regular  Subordination  so  necessary  to  Success,  are,  where  you 
preside,  impossible.  These  are  matters  within  my  observa- 
tion and  comprehension,  your  military  Operations  I  leave  to 
more  capable  Judges.  If  therefore  I  had  20  Ships  of  War  in  my 
Disposition,  I  should  not  give  one  of  them  to  Captain  Landais. 

All  the  higher  forms  of  intellectual  or  moral  power 
suggest  the  idea  of  reserve  force,  and  of  nothing  is  this 
truer  than  the  self-controlled  indignation  of  a  really 
strong  man  like  Franklin  or  Washington. 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    163 

What  Franklin  did  for  Philadelphia,  when  peace 
prevailed,  we  have  already  seen ;  what  he  did  for  it,  when 
threatened  by  war,  remains  to  be  told.  In  1747,  England 
was  involved  in  a  struggle  with  France  and  Spain,  and  the 
city  lay  at  the  mercy  of  French  and  Spanish  privateers, 
all  the  efforts  of  Governor  Thomas  to  induce  the  Quaker 
majority  in  the  Assembly  to  pass  a  militia  law  and  to 
make  other  provision  for  the  security  of  the  Province 
having  proved  wholly  futile.  Under  these  circum- 
stances, Franklin  wrote  and  published  a  pamphlet, 
entitled  Plain  Truth,  for  the  purpose  of  arousing  the 
people  of  the  Province  to  a  true  sense  of  their  perilous 
predicament. 

The  pamphlet  [Franklin  tells  us  in  the  Autobiography], 
had  a  sudden  and  surprising  effect,  and  we  can  readily  believe 
it,  for  rarely  has  an  alarum  been  more  artfully  sounded.  In 
its  pages  is  to  be  found  every  artifice  of  persuasion  that  could 
be  skillfully  used  by  an  adroit  pamphleteer  for  the  purpose 
of  playing  upon  the  fears  of  his  readers  and  inciting  them  to 
determined  measures  of  self-defense.  It  began  by  pointing 
out  the  causes  which  had  brought  about  an  entire  change  in 
the  former  happy  situation  of  the  Province,  namely  its  in- 
creased wealth,  its  defenseless  condition,  the  familiarity  ac- 
quired by  its  enemies  with  its  Bay  and  River  through  prisoners, 
bearers  of  flags  of  truce,  spies,  and,  perhaps,  traitors,  the  ease 
with  which  pilots  could  be  employed  by  these  enemies  and  the 
known  absence  of  ships  of  war,  during  the  greatest  part  of  the 
year,  ever  since  the  war  began,  from  both  Virginia  and  New 
York.  That  the  enemies  of  the  Province  might  even  then  have 
some  of  their  spies  in  the  Province  could  not  be  seriously 
doubted,  it  declared,  for  to  maintain  such  spies  had  been  the 
practice  of  all  nations  in  all  ages,  as  for  example  the  five  men 
sent  by  the  Children  of  Dan  to  spy  out  the  land  of  the  Zidoni- 
ans,  and  search  it.  (Book  of  Judges,  Chap.  XVIII,  V.  2). 
These  men,  while  engaged  in  their  enterprise,  met  with  a  cer- 
tain idolatrous  priest  of  their  own  persuasion  (would  to  God 
no  such  priests  were  to  be  found  among  the  Pennsylvanians !) 


1 64       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

And,  when  they  questioned  him  as  to  whether  their  way  would 
be  prosperous,  he  among  other  things  said  unto  them,  Go  in 
Peace;  before  the  Lord  is  your  Way  wherein  you  go:  (It  was  well 
known  that  there  were  many  priests  in  the  Province  of  the  same 
religion  as  those  who,  of  late,  encouraged  the  French  to  invade 
the  mother  country).     And  they  came,   (Verse  7)  to  Laish, 
and  saw  the  People  that  were  therein,  how  they  dwelt  CARELESS, 
after  the  Manner  of  the  Zidonians,  quiet  and  secure.     They 
thought  themselves  secure  no  doubt;  and,  as  they  never  had 
been  disturbed,  vainly  imagined  they  never  should.     It  was  not 
unlikely  that  some  saw  the  danger  they  were  exposed  to  by 
living  in  that  careless  manner;  but  it  was  not  unlikely,  too, 
that  if  these  publicly  expressed  their  apprehensions,  the  rest 
reproached  them  as  timorous  persons,  wanting  courage  or 
confidence  in  their  Gods,  who  (they  perhaps  said)  had  hitherto 
protected  them.    But  the  spies  (Verse  8)  returned,  and  among 
other  things  said  to  their  countrymen  (Verse  9),  A  rise  that  we 
may  go  up  against  them;  for  we  have  seen  the  Land  and  behold 
it  is  very  good!  When  ye  go,  ye  shall  come  unto  a  People  SECURE 
(that  is  a  people  that  apprehend  no  danger,  and  therefore 
have  made  no  provision  against  it;  great  encouragement  this), 
and  to  a  large  Land,  and  a  Place  where  there  is  no  Want  of  any 
Thing.     What  could  they  desire  more  ?     Accordingly  we  find, 
continued  Plain   Truth,  in  the  succeeding  verses  that  six 
hundred  Men  only,  appointed  with  Weapons  of  War,  undertook 
the  conquest  of  this  large  Land;  knowing  that  600  men,  armed 
and  disciplined,  would  be  an  overmatch,  perhaps,  for  60,000 
unarmed,  undisciplined,  and  off  their  guard.     And  when  they 
went  against  it,  the  idolatrous  priest  (Verse  1 7)  with  his  graven 
Image,  and  his  Ephod,  and  his  Teraphim,  and  his  molten  Image 
(plenty  of  superstitious  trinkets)  joined  with  them,  and,  no 
doubt,  gave  them  all  the  intelligence  and  assistance  in  his 
power;  his  heart,  as  the  text  assures  us,  being  glad,  perhaps, 
for  reasons  more  than  one.  And  now  what  was  the  fate  of  poor 
Laish?     The  600  men,  being  arrived,  found,  as  the  spies  had 
reported,  a  people  quiet  and  secure.    (Verses  20,  21).    And 
they  smote  them  with  the  Edge  of  the  Sword,  and  burnt  the  City 
with  fire;  and  there  was  no  deliverer,  because  it  was  far  from 
Zidon — not  so  far  from  Zidon,  however,  as  Pennsylvania  was 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    165 

from  Britain;  and  yet  we  are,  said  Plain  Truth,  more  careless 
than  the  people  of  Laish! 

Having  awakened  in  this  clever  fashion  the  slumbering 
strings  of  sectarian  hatred  and  religious  association,  the 
author  of  Plain  Truth  brings  the  same  sure  and  compelling 
touch  to  the  other  points  of  his  theme:  the  danger  that 
the  Iroquois  might,  from  considerations  set  forth  in  the 
pamphlet  with  telling  force,  be  wholly  gained  over  by  the 
French;  which  meant  deserted  plantations,  ruin,  blood- 
shed and  confusion;  the  folly  and  selfishness  of  the  view 
that  Rural  Pennsylvania  and  the  City  of  Philadelphia 
did  not  owe  each  other  mutual  obligations  of  assistance; 
the  ruin  in  which  commerce,  trade  and  industry  were 
certain  to  be  involved  by  the  occlusion  of  the  Delaware ; 
the  probability  that  the  enemy,  finding  that  he  could  come 
higher  and  higher  up  the  river,  seize  vessels,  land  and 
plunder  plantations  and  villages,  and  return  with  his 
booty  unmolested,  might  finally  be  led  to  believe  that  all 
Pennsylvanians  were  Quakers,  against  all  defence,  from  a 
principle  of  conscience,  and  thus  be  induced  to  strike 
one  bold  stroke  for  the  city  and  for  the  whole  plunder 
of  the  river. 

Then,  after  dispatching  with  a  few  practical  observations 
the  fallacy  that  the  expense  of  a  vessel  to  guard  the  trade 
of  the  Province  would  be  greater  than  any  loss  that  the 
enemy  could  inflict  upon  the  Province  at  sea,  and  that  it 
would  be  cheaper  for  the  Government  to  open  an  insurance 
office  and  to  pay  every  such  loss,  the  pamphlet  presents 
a  harrowing  description  of  the  fate  that  would  befall 
Philadelphia  if  it  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy.  It 
is  all  limned  with  the  minuteness  of  a  Dutch  painting; 
the  confusion  and  disorder;  the  outcries  and  lamentations; 
the  stream  of  outgoing  fugitives  (including  citizens  re- 
puted to  be  rich  and  fearful  of  the  torture),  hurrying  away 
with  their  effects ;  the  wives  and  children  hanging  upon  the 


1 66       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

necks  of  their  husbands  and  fathers  and  imploring  them 
to  be  gone;  the  helplessness  of  the  few  that  would  remain; 
the  sack;  the  conflagration.  But  what,  asked  Plain 
Truth,  would  the  condition  of  the  Philadelphians  be,  if 
suddenly  surprised  without  previous  alarm,  perhaps  in 
the  night?  Confined  to  their  houses,  they  would  have 
nothing  to  trust  to  but  the  enemy's' mercy.  Their  best 
fortune  would  be  to  fall  under  the  power  of  commanders 
of  King's  ships,  able  to  control  the  mariners ;  and  not  into 
the  hands  of  licentious  privateers.  Who  could  without 
the  utmost  horror  conceive  the  miseries  of  the  latter, 
when  their  persons,  fortunes,  wives  and  daughters  would 
be  subject  to  the  wanton  and  unbridled  rage,  rapine  and 
lust  of  negroes,  mulattoes  and  others,  the  vilest  and  most 
abandoned  of  mankind?  And  then  in  a  timely  marginal 
note  Plain  Truth  tells  how  poor  Captain  Brown,  for 
bravely  defending  himself  and  his  vessel  longer  than  the 
ragged  crew  of  a  Spanish  privateer  expected,  was  bar- 
barously stabbed  and  murdered,  though  on  his  knees 
begging  quarter! 

It  would  not  be  so  bad  for  the  rich,  said  Plain 
Truth.  The  means  of  speedy  flight  were  ready  to  their 
hands,  and  they  could  lay  by  money  and  effects  in  distant 
and  safe  places  against  the  evil  day.  It  was  by  the  mid- 
dling people,  the  tradesmen,  shopkeepers  and  farmers  of 
the  Province  and  city  that  the  brunt  would  have  to  be 
borne.  They  could  not  all  fly  with  their  families,  and,  if 
they  could,  how  would  they  subsist?  Upon  them  too  the 
weight  of  the  contributions  exacted  by  the  enemy  (as 
was  true  of  ordinary  taxes)  would  rest.  Though  numer- 
ous, this  class  was  quite  defenceless  as  it  had  neither 
forts,  arms,  union  nor  discipline,  and  yet  on  whom  could 
it  fix  its  eyes  with  the  least  expectation  that  they  would 
do  anything  for  its  security?  Not  on  that  wealthy  and 
powerful  body  of  people,  the  Quakers,  who  had  ever  since 
the  war  controlled  the  elections  of  the  Province  and  filled 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    167 

almost  every  seat  in  the  Assembly.  Should  the  Quakers 
be  conjured  by  all  the  ties  of  neighborhood,  friendship, 
justice  and  humanity  to  consider  the  obligations  that  they 
owed  to  a  very  great  part  of  the  people  who  could  have  no 
confidence  that  God  would  protect  those  that  neglected 
the  use  of  rational  means  for  protecting  themselves,  and 
the  distraction,  misery  and  confusion,  desolation  and 
distress  which  might  possibly  be  the  effect  of  their  un- 
reasonable predominancy  and  perseverance,  yet  all  would 
be  in  vain ;  for  the  Quakers  had  already  been  by  great  num- 
bers of  the  people  petitioned  in  vain.  The  late  Governor 
of  the  Province  did  for  years  solicit,  request  and  even 
threaten  them  in  vain.  The  council  had  twice  remon- 
strated with  them  in  vain.  Their  religious  prepossessions 
were  unchangeable,  their  obstinacy  invincible. 

The  manner  in  which  Franklin  makes  his  strictures  on 
the  Quakers  in  this  pamphlet  keen  enough  to  shame 
them  into  letting  the  other  elements  of  the  population  of 
the  Province  have  the  use  of  enough  of  the  public  money 
to  enable  them  to  protect  both  themselves  and  the  Quakers 
and  yet  not  keen  enough  to  make  the  Quakers  thoroughly 
incensed  as  well  as  obstinate  is  one  of  the  notable  features 
of  Plain  Truth. 

The  prospect  of  the  middling  people  of  the  Province, 
the  pamphlet  continues,  was  no  better,  if  they  turned  their 
eyes  to  those  great  and  rich  men,  merchants  and  others, 
who  were  ever  railing  at  the  Quakers,  but  took  no  one  step 
themselves  for  the  public  safety.  With  their  wealth 
and  influence,  they  might  easily  promote  military  ardor 
and  discipline  in  the  Province  and  effect  everything  under 
God  for  its  protection.  But  envy  seemed  to  have  taken 
possession  of  their  hearts,  and  to  have  eaten  out  and 
destroyed  every  generous,  noble,  public-spirited  sentiment, 
and  rage  at  the  disappointment  of  their  little  schemes 
for  power  gnawed  their  souls,  and  filled  them  with  such 
cordial  hatred  to  their  opponents  that  any  proposal,  by 


1 68       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

the  execution  of  which  the  latter  might  receive  benefit 
as  well  as  themselves,  was  rejected  with  indignation. 

However,  if  the  city  and  Province  were  brought  to 
destruction,  it  would  not  be  for  want  of  numerous  in- 
habitants able  to  bear  arms  in  their  defence.  It  was 
computed  that  the  Province  had  at  least  (exclusive  of  the 
Quakers)  60,000  fighting  men,  acquainted  with  firearms, 
many  of  them  hunters  and  marksmen,  hardy  and  bold. 
All  they  lacked  was  order,  discipline  and  a  few  cannon. 
At  present  they  were  like  the  separate  filaments  of  flax 
before  the  thread  is  formed,  without  strength  because 
without  connection;  but  union  would  make  them  strong 
and  even  formidable.  Many  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
Province  were  of  the  British  race,  and,  though  the  fierce 
fighting  animals  of  those  happy  islands  were  said  to  abate 
their  natural  fire  and  intrepidity,  when  removed  to  a  foreign 
clime,  yet,  with  their  people  this  was  not  so.  Among  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Province  likewise  were  those  brave  men 
whose  fathers  in  the  last  age  made  so  glorious  a  stand  for 
Protestanism  and  English  liberty,  when  invaded  by  a 
powerful  French  Army,  joined  by  Irish  Catholics,  under  a 
bigoted  Popish  King;  and  also  thousands  of  that  warlike 
nation  whose  sons  had  ever  since  the  time  of  Caesar 
maintained  the  character  he  gave  their  fathers  of  uniting 
the  most  obstinate  courage  to  all  the  other  military  virtues 
— the  brave  and  steady  Germans. 

Poor  Richard,  of  course,  had  to  have  his  proverb  in  war 
as  well  as  peace.  Were  the  union  formed,  and  the  fighting 
men  of  the  Province  once  united,  thoroughly  armed  and 
disciplined,  the  very  fame  of  strength  and  readiness, 
Plain  Truth  thought,  would  be  a  means  of  discouraging 
the  enemy,  "for,"  said  Franklin,  "  'tis  a  wise  and  true 
Saying,  that  One  Sword  often  keeps  another  in  the  Scabbard. 
The  Way  to  secure  Peace  is  to  be  prepared  for  War." 

After  these  weighty  maxims,  this  remarkable  pamphlet 
ends  with  the  statement  that,  if  its  hints  were  so  happy 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    169 

as  to  meet  with  a  suitable  disposition  of  mind  from  the 
countrymen  and  fellow  citizens  of  the  writer,  he  would, 
in  a  few  days,  lay  before  them  a  form  of  association  for 
the  purposes  mentioned  in  the  pamphlet,  together  with  a 
practical  scheme  for  raising  the  money  necessary  for  the 
crisis  without  laying  a  burthen  on  any  man. 
Like 

"  The  drum, 
That  makes  the  warrior's  stomach  come," 

was  Plain  Truth  with  its  sudden  and  surprising  effect. 
Agreeably  with  the  popular  response  to  it,  Franklin 
drafted  articles  of  association,  after  consulting  with 
others,  and  issued  a  call  for  a  citizen's  rally  in  the 
Whitefield  meeting-house.  When  the  citizens  assembled, 
printed  copies  of  the  articles  had  already  been  struck  off, 
and  pens  and  ink  had  been  distributed  throughout  the 
hall.  Franklin  then  harangued  the  gathering  a  little, 
read  and  explained  the  articles,  and  handed  around  the 
printed  copies.  They  were  so  eagerly  signed  that,  when 
the  meeting  broke  up,  there  were  more  than  twelve 
hundred  signatures,  and  this  number,  when  the  country 
people  were  subsequently  given  an  opportunity  to  sign, 
swelled  to  more  than  ten  thousand.  All  the  signers 
furnished  themselves  as  soon  as  they  could  with  arms, 
organized  into  companies  and  regiments,  chose  their  own 
officers,  and  met  every  week  for  military  training.  The 
contagion  spread  even  to  the  women,  and,  with  money 
raised  by  their  own  subscriptions,  they  procured  silk 
colors  for  the  companies,  set  off  with  devices  and  mottoes 
furnished  by  Franklin  himself,  who  had  a  peculiar  turn 
for  designing  things  of  that  sort.  The  next  step  was  for 
the  officers  of  the  companies,  constituting  the  Philadelphia 
regiment,  to  meet  and  choose  a  colonel.  They  did  so,  and 
selected  the  only  man,  or  almost  the  only  man,  so  far  as 


170       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

we  know,  who  has  ever,  in  the  history  of  the  American 
Militia,  conceived  himself  to  be  unfit  for  the  office  of 
colonel,  and  chat  is  Benjamin  Franklin.  "Conceiving  my- 
self unfit, "  says  Franklin  in  the  Autobiography ,  "I  declin'd 
that  station,  and  recommended  Mr.  Lawrence,  a  fine 
person,  and  man  of  influence,  who  was  accordingly 
appointed.' '  But  between  building  and  equipping  a 
battery  on  the  river  below  Philadelphia,  and  manipulat- 
ing Quaker  scruples,  Franklin  had  his  hands  quite  as  full 
as  were  those  of  Colonel  Lawrence.  At  that  time,  whether 
the  souls  of  men  were  to  be  saved  by  the  erection  of  a 
church  or  their  bodies  to  be  destroyed  by  the  erection  of  a 
battery,  resort  was  had  to  a  lottery.  Franklin  himself, 
for  instance,  was  twice  appointed  by  the  vestry  of  Christ 
Church  the  manager  of  a  lottery  for  the  purpose  of  build- 
ing a  steeple  and  buying  a  chime  of  bells  for  that  church. 
A  lottery,  therefore,  was  proposed  by  him  to  defray  the 
expense  of  building  and  equipping  the  battery.  The 
suggestion  was  eagerly  acted  upon,  and,  with  the  current 
of  popular  enthusiasm  running  so  swiftly,  the  lottery  soon 
filled,  and  a  battery  with  merlons  framed  of  logs  and 
packed  with  earth  was  rapidly  erected.  The  problem 
was  how  to  get  the  necessary  ordnance.  Some  old  cannon 
were  bought  in  Boston,  a  not  over-sanguine  request  for 
some  was  made  of  the  stingy  Proprietaries,  Richard  and 
Thomas  Penn,  an  order  was  given  to  other  persons  in 
England  to  purchase  in  case  the  request  was  not  honored, 
and  Colonel  Lawrence,  William  Allen,  Abram  Taylor 
and  Franklin  were  dispatched  to  New  York  by  the 
association  to  borrow  what  cannon  they  could  from 
Governor  George  Clinton.  Fortunately  for  Pennsylvania, 
the  cockles  of  that  Governor's  heart  were  of  the  kind  that 
glow  and  expand  with  generous  benevolence  when  warmed 
by  the  bottle.  At  first,  he  refused  peremptorily  to  let  the 
embassy  have  any  cannon,  but,  later  on  when  he  sat  at 
meat,  or  rather  drink,  with  the  members  of  his  council, 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    171 

there  was,  we  are  told  by  Franklin  in  the  Autobiography, 
great  drinking  of  Madeira  wine,  as  the  custom  of  New 
York  then  was.  With  the  progress  of  the  dinner,  he 
softened  by  degrees,  and  said  that  he  would  lend  six. 
After  a  few  more  bumpers,  he  advanced  to  ten,  and,  at 
length,  he  very  good-naturedly  conceded  eighteen.  They 
were  fine  cannon,  eigh teen-pounders,  with  their  carriages, 
and  were  soon  transported  and  mounted  on  the  battery  in 
Pennsylvania,  where  the  associators  kept  a  nightly  guard 
while  the  war  lasted ;  and  where,  among  the  rest,  Franklin 
regularly  took  his  turn  of  duty  as  a  common  soldier. 

The  activity  of  Franklin  at  this  conjuncture  not  only  won 
him  a  high  degree  of  popularity  with  his  fellow-citizens 
but  also  the  good  will  of  the  Governor  of  Pennsylvania 
and  his  Council,  who  took  him  into  their  confidence, 
and  consulted  with  him  whenever  it  was  felt  that 
their  concurrence  was  needed  by  the  association.  When 
they  approved  his  suggestion  that  a  fast  should  be  pro- 
claimed for  the  purpose  of  invoking  the  blessing  of  Heaven 
upon  the  association,  and  it  was  found  that  no  such  thing 
had  ever  been  thought  of  in  Pennsylvania  before,  he  even 
fell  back  upon  his  New  England  training,  and  drew  up  a 
proclamation  for  the  purpose  in  the  usual  form  which  was 
translated  into  German,  printed  in  both  English  and 
German,  and  circulated  throughout  the  Province.  The 
fast  day  fixed  by  the  paper  gave  the  clergy  of  the  different 
sects  in  Pennsylvania  a  favorable  opportunity  for  urging 
the  members  of  their  flocks  to  enroll  themselves  as  mem- 
bers of  the  association,  and  it  was  the  belief  of  Franklin 
that,  if  peace  had  not  soon  been  declared,  all  the  religious 
congregations  in  the  Province  except  those  of  the  Quakers 
would  have  been  enlisted  in  the  movement  for  the  defence 
of  the  Province. 

The  most  interesting  thing,  however,  connected  with 
this  whole  episode  was  the  conduct  of  the  Quakers. 
James  Logan,  true  to  his  former  principles,  wrote  a  cogent 


172       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

address  to  his  Fellow-Friends  justifying  defensive  war, 
and  placed  sixty  pounds  in  Franklin's  hands  with  instruc- 
tions to  him  to  apply  all  the  lottery  prizes  that  they  might 
win  to  the  cost  of  the  battery.  Other  Friends  also, 
perhaps  most  of  the  younger  ones,  were  in  favor  of  defence, 
but  many  Friends  preferred  to  keep  up  silently  the  sem- 
blance of  conformity  with  their  dogma  about  war,  though 
ready  enough  to  have  it  refined  away  by  Franklin's 
astuteness,  which  had  a  gift  for  working  around  obstacles 
when  it  could  not  climb  over  or  break  through  them. 
That  the  Quakers,  as  a  body,  even  if  they  did  not  relish 
his  new-born  intimacy  with  the  executive  councillors, 
with  whom  they  had  had  a  feud  of  long  standing,  were  not 
losing  much  of  their  placidity  over  the  proposition  to 
protect  their  throats  and  chattels  against  their  will, 
an  ambitious  young  gentleman,  who  wished  to  displace 
Franklin,  as  the  Clerk  of  the  Quaker  Assembly,  soon 
learnt.  Like  the  generous  Maori  of  New  Zealand,  who 
refrained  from  descending  upon  their  English  invaders 
until  they  had  duly  communicated  to  them  the  hour  of 
their  proposed  onset,  he  advised  Franklin  (from  good 
will  he  said)  to  resign  as  more  consistent  with  his  honor 
than  being  turned  out.  He  little  realized  apparently 
that  he  was  attempting  to  intimidate  one  of  the  grimmest 
antagonists  that  ever  entertained  the  robuster  American 
ideas  about  public  office,  the  manner  in  which  it  is  to  be 
sought,  and  the  prehensile  tenacity,  with  which  it  is  to  be 
clung  to,  when  secured.  But  for  the  fact  that  Franklin 
was  always  a  highly  faithful  and  efficient  officeholder,  and 
the  further  fact  that  he  gave  his  entire  salary,  as  President 
of  Pennsylvania,  to  public  objects,  he  would  not  fall  far 
short  of  being  a  typical  American  officeholder  of  the 
better  class,  as  that  class  was  before  the  era  of  civil-service 
reform.  On  a  later  occasion,  when  his  resignation  as 
Deputy  Postmaster- General  for  America  was  desired,  he 
humorously  observed  in  a  letter  to  his  sister,  Jane,  that  he 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    173 

was  deficient  in  the  Christian  virtue  of  resignation.  "If 
they  would  have  my  Office,"  he  said,  "they  must  take 
it."  And,  on  another  later  occasion,  he  strongly  advised 
his  son  not  to  resign  his  office,  as  Governor  of  New  Jersey, 
because,  while  much  might  be  made  of  a  removal,  nothing 
could  be  made  of  a  resignation.  As  long  as  there  was  a 
son,  or  a  grandson  of  his  own,  with  no  fear  of  the  incli- 
nation of  political  competitors  to  pry  into  skeleton  closets, 
or  a  relative  of  any  sort  to  enjoy  the  sweets  of  public 
office,  Franklin  appears  to  have  acted  consistently  upon 
the  principle  that  the  persons  whose  qualifications  we 
know  best,  through  the  accident  of  family  intimacy,  are 
the  persons  that  are  likely  to  confer  the  highest  degree  of 
credit  upon  us  when  we  appoint  them  to  public  positions. 
With  this  general  outlook  upon  the  part  of  Franklin  in 
regard  to  public  office,  the  young  man,  who  wished  to  be 
his  successor,  as  clerk,  soon  found  that  there  was  nothing 
left  for  him  to  do  except  to  go  off  sorrowfully  like  the 
young  man  in  the  Scriptures. 

My  answer  to  him  [says  Franklin  in  the  Autobiography] 
was,  that  I  had  read  or  heard  of  some  public  man  who  made  it 
a  rule  never  to  ask  for  an  office,  and  never  to  refuse  one  when 
offer'd  to  him.  "I  approve,"  says  I,  "of  his  rule,  and  will  practice 
it  with  a  small  addition;  I  shall  never  ask,  never  refuse,  nor 
ever  resign  an  office.  If  they  will  have  my  office  of  clerk  to 
dispose  of  to  another,  they  shall  take  it  from  me.  I  will 
not,  by  giving  it  up,  lose  my  right  of  some  time  or  other 
making  reprisals  on  my  adversaries. 

Franklin  never  actually  refused  an  office  except  when  its 
duties  could  be  discharged  only  from  what  was  virtually 
his  death-bed,  and  he  never  resigned  an  office,  though 
he  was  removed  from  one  under  circumstances  which 
furnished  a  fine  illustration,  indeed,  of  how  much  can  be 
made  of  a  removal.  On  the  other  hand,  he  did  not  keep 
his  vow  of  never  asking  for  an  office;  for  melancholy  to 


174       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

relate,  like  a  raven  eying  a  sick  horse,  we  find  him  fore- 
handed enough,  when  it  was  manifest  that  Mr.  Elliot 
Benger,  the  Deputy  Postmaster- General  of  America, 
was  about  to  pay  his  last  debt  to  nature,  to  apply  for  the 
reversion  of  his  office  before  the  debt  was  actually  paid, 
and  to  offer,  through  Chief  Justice  Allen  of  Pennsylvania, 
the  sum  of  three  hundred  pounds  in  perquisites  and 
contingent  fees  and  charges  for  it.  Indeed,  Benger, 
though  "tho't  to  be  near  his  end"  by  Franklin,  when  the 
latter  first  set  to  work  to  succeed  him,  did  not  die  until 
more  than  two  years  afterwards. *  As  we  shall  see  here- 
after, to  Franklin,  as  an  officeholder,  was  honorably 
allotted  even  the  state  of  supreme  beatitude  under  the 
spoils  system  of  politics  which  consists  in  holding  more 
than  one  public  office  at  one  time. 

The  young  aspirant  for  Franklin's  place  had  nothing 
but  his  generous  motives  to  soothe  his  disappointment, 
for  at  the  next  election  Franklin  was  unanimously  elected 
clerk  as  usual.  Indeed,  Franklin  had  reason  to  believe 
that  the  measures  taken  for  the  protection  of  Pennsylvania 
were  not  disagreeable  to  any  of  the  Quakers,  provided 
that  they  were  not  required  to  participate  actively  in 

1  Franklin  certainly  set  an  example  on  this  occasion  of  the  vigilant 
regard  to  the  future  which  he  afterwards  enjoined  in  such  a  picturesque 
way  upon  Temple,  when  he  was  counselling  the  latter  not  to  let  the  season 
of  youth  slip  by  him  unimproved  by  diligence  in  his  studies.  "The 
Ancients,"  he  said,  "painted  Opportunity  as  an  old  Man  with  Wings  to  his 
Feet  &  Shoulders,  a  great  Lock  of  Hair  on  the  forepart  of  his  Head,  but  bald 
behind;  whence  comes  our  old  saying,  Take  Time  by  the  Forelock;  as  much 
as  to  say,  when  it  is  past,  there  is  no  means  of  pulling  it  back  again; 
as  there  is  no  Lock  behind  to  take  hold  of  for  that  purpose."  The  ad- 
vice of  similar  tenor  in  a  somewhat  later'  letter  from  Franklin  to  Temple 
has  a  touch  of  poetry  about  it.  "If  this  Season  is  neglected,"  he  said, 
"it  will  be  like  cutting  off  the  Spring  from  the  Year."  So  quick  was  the 
sympathy  of  Franklin  always  with  youthful  feelings  and  interests  that 
he  never  grew  too  old  for  the  application  to  him  of  Emerson's  highly 
imaginative  lines, 

"The  old  wine  darkling  in  the  cask, 
Feels  the  bloom  on  the  living  vine." 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    175 

them.  The  proportion  of  Quakers  sincerely  opposed  to 
resistance,  he  estimated,  after  having  had  a  chance  to 
look  the  field  over,  was  as  one  to  twenty-one  only. 

His  long  contact  with  the  Assembly,  as  its  clerk,  had 
afforded  him  excellent  opportunities  for  observing  how 
embarrassed  its  Quaker  majority,  which  loved  political 
power  quite  as  much  as  it  detested  war  and  Presbyterians, 
was,  whenever  applications  were  made  to  the  Assembly  for 
military  grants  by  order  of  the  Crown,  and  to  what  subtle 
shifts  this  majority  was  compelled  to  resort  on  such  occa- 
sions to  save  its  face;  ending  finally  in  its  voting  money 
simply  for  the  "King's  use,"  and  never  inquiring  how  it 
was  spent.  Sometimes  the  demand  was  not  directly 
from  the  Crown,  and  then  the  conflict,  that  is  being 
perpetually  renewed  between  eccentric  human  opinions 
and  the  inexorable  order  of  the  universe,  became  acute, 
indeed,  as,  for  instance,  when  this  majority  was  urged 
by  Governor  Thomas  to  appropriate  a  sum  of  money 
with  which  to  buy  powder  for  the  military  needs  of  New 
England.  Money  to  buy  powder  nakedly  the  Quakers 
were  not  willing  to  vote,  but  they  appropriated  three 
thousand  pounds  to  be  put  into  the  hands  of  the  Governor 
for  the  purchase  of  bread,  flour,  wheat  or  other  grain. 
Some  members  of  the  Governor's  Council,  desirous  of 
still  further  embarrassing  the  Assembly,  advised  him 
not  to  accept  provisions  instead  of  powder,  but  he  replied : 
"I  shall  take  the  money,  for  I  understand  very  well  their 
meaning;  other  grain  is  gunpowder."  Gunpowder  he 
accordingly  bought,  and  the  Quakers  maintained  a  silence 
as  profound  as  that  which  lulled  Franklin  to  sleep  in  their 
great  meeting-house  when  he  first  arrived  in  Philadelphia. 
The  esoteric  meaning  of  this  kind  of  language  was,  of 
course,  not  likely  to  be  lost  upon  a  man  so  prompt  as 
Franklin  to  take  a  wink  for  a  nod.  With  his  practical 
turn  of  mind,  he  was  the  last  person  in  the  world  to  boggle 
over  delphic  words  when  they  were  clear  enough  for  him 


176       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

to  see  that  they  gave  him  all  that  he  wanted.  So,  when 
it  was  doubtful  whether  the  Quakers  in  the  Union  Fire 
Company  would  vote  a  fund  of  sixty  pounds  for  the 
purchase  of  tickets  in  the  lottery,  remembering  the  inci- 
dent, which  has  just  been  related,  he  said  to  his  friend, 
Syng,  one  of  its  members,  "If  we  fail,  let  us  move  the 
purchase  of  a  fire-engine  with  the  money ;  the  Quakers  can 
have  no  objection  to  that ;  and  then,  if  you  nominate  me 
and  I  you  as  a  committee  for  that  purpose,  we  will  buy  a 
great  gun,  which  is  certainly  afire  engine,11  But  there  was 
no  real  danger  of  the  fund  not  being  voted.  The  company 
consisted  of  thirty  members,  of  whom  twenty-two  were 
Quakers.  The  remaining  eight  punctually  attended  the 
meeting,  at  which  the  vote  was  to  be  taken.  Only  one 
Quaker,  Mr.  James  Morris,  appeared  to  oppose  the  grant. 
The  proposition,  he  said,  with  the  confidence  that  usually 
marks  statements  in  a  democratic  community  about  the 
preponderance  of  popular  opinion,  ought  never  to  have 
been  made,  as  Friends  were  all  against  it,  and  it  would 
create  such  discord  as  might  break  up  the  company.  At 
any  rate,  he  thought  that,  though  the  hour  for  business 
had  arrived,  a  little  time  should  be  allowed  for  the  appear- 
ance of  other  members  of  the  company,  who,  he  knew, 
intended  to  come  for  the  purpose  of  voting  against  the 
proposition.  While  this  suggestion  was  being  combated, 
who  should  appear  but  a  waiter  to  tell  Franklin  that  two 
gentlemen  below  desired  to  speak  with  him.  These  proved 
to  be  two  of  the  Quaker  members  of  the  company.  Eight 
of  them,  they  said,  were  assembled  at  a  tavern  just  by, 
who  were  ready  to  come  and  vote  for  the  proposition,  if 
they  should  be  needed,  but  did  not  desire  to  be  sent  for, 
if  their  assistance  could  be  dispensed  with.  Franklin 
then  went  back  to  Mr.  Morris,  and  after  a  little  seeming 
hesitation — for  at  times  he  had  a  way  of  piecing  out  the 
skin  of  the  lion  with  the  tail  of  the  fox — agreed  to  a  delay 
of  another  hour.    This  Mr.  Morris  admitted  was  extremely 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    177 

fair.  Nobody  else  came,  and,  upon  the  expiration  of  the 
hour,  the  proposition  was  carried  by  a  vote  of  eight  to 
one.  Franklin  was  a  thoroughly  normal  man  himself, 
but  his  wit,  patience  and  rare  capacity  for  self-trans- 
formation usually  enabled  him  to  deal  successfully  with 
any  degree  of  abnormality  in  others,  however  pronounced. 
"Sensible  people, "  he  once  said  to  his  sister  Jane,  "will 
give  a  bucket  or  two  of  water  to  a  dry  pump,  that  they 
may  afterwards  get  from  it  all  they  have  occasion  for." 

The  next  time  that  Franklin  crosses  the  stage  of  war  is 
when  General  Braddock  and  his  men,  in  the  buskins  of 
high  tragedy,  are  moving  to  their  doom.  It  had  been 
reported  to  the  General  that,  not  only  had  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Assembly  refused  to  vote  money  for  the  King's 
service,  but  that  the  Pennsylvanians  themselves  had 
sold  provisions  to  the  French,  declined  to  aid  in  the 
construction  of  a  road  to  the  West,  and  withheld  wagons 
and  horses  sorely  needed  by  the  expedition;  and  the 
General  had  just  been  compelled  to  settle  down  for  a  time 
in  the  temper  of  a  chafed  bull  at  Frederick,  Maryland, 
for  the  want  of  wagons  and  horses  to  transport  his  army  to 
Fort  Duquesne,  which  he  afterwards  told  Franklin  could 
hardly  detain  him  above  three  or  four  days  on  his  triumph- 
ant progress  to  Niagara  and  Frontenac.  Forts,  he  seemed 
to  think,  to  recall  Franklin's  simile,  could  be  taken  as 
easily  as  snuff.  Under  these  circumstances,  the  Penn- 
sylvania Assembly  decided  to  ask  Franklin  to  visit  Brad- 
dock's  camp,  ostensibly  as  Deputy  Postmaster-General, 
for  the  purpose  of  arranging  a  plan,  by  which  the  General 
could  effectively  keep  in  postal  touch  with  the  Colonial 
Governors,  but  really  for  the  purpose  of  removing  the 
prejudices  which  the  General  had  formed  against  Pennsyl- 
vania. And  a  pleasant  April  journey  that  must  have 
been  for  the  mounted  Franklin  through  Pennsylvania  and 
Delaware,  and  over  "the  green- walled  hills  of  Maryland, " 
with  his  son,  and  the  Governors  of  New  York  and  Massa- 


VOL.    I — 12 


178       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

chusetts,  also  mounted,  as  his  companions.  That  such  a 
brave  company,  as  it  passed  through  the  mild  vernal  air  cf 
that  delightful  season  from  stage  to  stage  of  its  itinerary, 
experienced  no  dearth  of  hospitable  offices,  we  may  rest 
assured.  One  Maryland  gentleman,  the  "amiable  and 
worthy"  Colonel  Benjamin  Tasker,  who  entertained 
Franklin  and  William  Franklin  on  this  journey  with  great 
hospitality  and  kindness  at  his  country  place,  even  pleas- 
antly claimed  that  a  whirlwind,  which  Franklin  made 
the  subject  of  a  most  graphic  description  in  a  letter  to 
Peter  Collinson,  had  been  got  up  by  him  on  purpose  to 
treat  Mr.  Franklin. 

It  was  probably  the  energy  and  resource  of  Franklin  that 
were  really  responsible  for  Braddock's  defeat,  paradoxical 
as  this  may  sound.  When  that  brave  but  rash  and  in- 
fatuated general  and  his  officers  found  that  only  twenty- 
five  wagons  could  be  obtained  in  Virginia  and  Maryland 
for  the  expedition,  they  declared  that  it  was  at  an  end ;  not 
less  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  wagons  being  necessary 
for  the  purpose.  Their  hopes,  however,  were  revived 
when  Franklin  remarked  that  it  was  a  pity  that  the 
army  had  not  landed  in  Pennsylvania,  as  almost  every 
farmer  in  that  Colony  had  his  wagon.  This  observation 
was  eagerly  pounced  upon  by  Braddock,  and  Franklin 
was  duly  commissioned  to  procure  the  needed  wagons. 
With  such  consummate  art  did  he,  in  an  address  published 
by  him  at  Lancaster,  partly  by  persuasion,  and  partly 
by  threats,  work  upon  the  feelings  of  the  prosperous 
farmers  of  York,  Lancaster  and  Cumberland  Counties 
that  in  two  weeks  the  one  hundred  and  fifty  wagons,  with 
two  hundred  and  fifty-nine  pack-horses,  were  on  their 
way  to  Braddock's  camp.  Nay  more;  with  the  aid  of 
William  Franklin,  who  knew  something  of  camp  life  and 
its  wants,  he  drew  up  a  list  of  provisions  for  Braddock's 
subaltern  officers,  whose  means  were  too  limited  to  enable 
them  to  victual  themselves  comfortably  for  the  march, 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    179 

and  induced  the  Pennsylvania  Assembly  to  make  a  pre- 
sent of  them  to  these  officers.  The  twenty  parcels,  in 
which  the  provisions  were  packed,  were  each  placed  upon 
a  horse  and  presented  to  a  subaltern  together  with  the 
horse  itself.  The  twenty  horses  and  their  packs  arrived  in 
camp  as  soon  as  the  wagons,  and  were  very  thankfully 
received.  The  kindness  of  Franklin  in  procuring  them 
was  acknowledged  in  letters  to  him  from  the  colonels  of 
the  two  regiments  composing  Braddock's  army  in  the  most 
grateful  terms,  and  Braddock  was  so  delighted  with  his 
services  in  furnishing  the  wagons  and  pack-horses  that  he 
not  only  thanked  him  repeatedly,  craved  his  further 
assistance,  and  repaid  him  one  thousand  pounds  of  a 
sum  amounting  to  some  thirteen  hundred  pounds  which 
he  had  advanced,  but  wrote  home  a  letter  in  which,  after 
inveighing  against  the  "false  dealings  of  all  in  this  coun- 
try," with  whom  he  had  been  concerned,  he  commended 
Franklin's  promptitude  and  fidelity,  and  declared  that  his 
conduct  was  almost  the  only  instance  of  address  and 
fidelity  which  he  had  seen  in  America.  The  balance  of 
the  amount  that  Franklin  advanced  he  was  never  able  to 
collect. 

It  is  foreign  to  the  plan  of  this  book  to  describe  the 
horrors  of  the  sylvan  inferno  in  which  the  huddled  soldiers 
of  Braddock  stood  about  as  much  chance  of  successfully 
retaliating  upon  their  flitting  assailants  as  if  the  latter 
had  been  invisible  spirits.  It  is  enough  for  our  purpose 
to  say  that,  as  soon  as  the  wagoners,  whom  Franklin  had 
gathered  together,  saw  how  things  were  going,  they  each 
took  a  horse  from  his  wagon,  and  scampered  away  as  fast 
as  his  steed  could  carry  him,  leaving  too  many  wagons, 
provisions,  pieces  of  artillery,  stores  and  scalps  behind 
them  to  make  it  worth  the  while  of  the  victors  to  pursue 
them.  Franklin  states  in  the  Autobiography  that,  when 
Braddock,  with  whom  he  dined  daily  at  Frederick,  spoke 
of  passing  from  Fort  Duquesne  to  Niagara,  and  from 


180       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Niagara  to  Frontenac,  as  lightly  as  a  traveller  might  speak 
of  the  successive  inns  at  which  he  was  to  bait  on  a  peaceful 
journey,  he  conceived  some  doubts  and  fears  as  to  the 
event  of  the  campaign.  He  might  well  have  done  so, 
for  he  knew,  if  Braddock  did  not,  what  a  nimble,  painted 
and  befeathered  Indian  in  the  crepuscular  shades  of  the 
primeval  American  forest  was.  We  also  learn  from  the 
Autobiography  that  when  the  Doctors  Bond  came  to 
Franklin  to  ask  him  to  subscribe  to  fireworks,  to  be  set 
off  upon  the  fall  of  Fort  Duquesne,  he  looked  grave,  and 
said  that  it  would  be  time  enough  to  prepare  for  the 
rejoicing  when  they  knew  that  they  had  occasion  to 
rejoice.  All  this  was  natural  enough  in  a  man  whose 
temper  was  cautious,  and  who  had  dined  daily  for  some 
time  with  Braddock.  "The  General  presum'd  too  much, 
and  was  too  secure.  This  the  Event  proves,  but  it  was 
my  Opinion  from  the  time  I  saw  him  and  con  vers' d  with 
him."  These  were  the  words  of  Franklin  in  a  letter  to 
Peter  Collinson  shortly  after  the  catastrophe.  But,  when 
we  remember  his  written  assurance  in  his  Lancaster  ad- 
dress to  the  Pennsylvania  farmers  that  the  service,  to 
which  their  wagons  and  horses  would  be  put,  would  be 
light  and  easy,  and  above  all  the  individual  promises  of 
indemnity,  tantamount  to  the  pledge  of  his  entire  fortune, 
which  he  gave  to  these  farmers,  we  cannot  help  feeling 
that  Franklin's  doubts  and  fears  were  not  quite  so  strong 
as  he  afterwards  honestly  believed  them  to  be,  and  that 
his  second  sight  in  this  instance  was,  perhaps,  somewhat 
like  that  of  the  clairvoyant,  mentioned  in  the  letter, 
contributed  by  his  friend,  Joseph  Breintnal  to  one  of  his 
Busy-Body  essays,  who  was  "only  able  to  discern  Trans- 
actions about  the  Time,  and  for  the  most  Part  after  their 
happening."  Apart  from  the  evidence  afforded  by  the 
expedition  that,  if  Braddock  had  been  as  able  a  general  as 
Franklin  was  a  commissary,  its  result  would  have  been 
different,  its  chief  interest  to  the  biographer  of  Franklin 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    181 

consists  in  the  light  that  it  sheds  upon  the  self-satisfied 
ignorance  of  American  conditions  and  the  complete  want 
of  sympathy  with  the  Americans  themselves  which 
subsequently  aided  in  rendering  the  efforts  of  Franklin 
to  secure  a  fair  hearing  in  London  for  his  countrymen  so 
difficult.  When  Franklin  ventured  to  express  apprehen- 
sion that  the  slender  line  of  Braddock's  army,  nearly  four 
miles  long,  might  be  ambushed  by  the  Indians,  while 
winding  its  way  through  the  woods,  and  be  cut  like  a 
thread  into  several  pieces,  Braddock  smiled  at  his  sim- 
plicity and  replied,  "These  savages  may,  indeed,  be  a 
formidable  enemy  to  your  raw  American  militia,  but  upon 
the  King's  regular  and  disciplin'd  troops,  sir,  it  is  im- 
possible they  should  make  any  impression."  He  saw 
enough  before  he  was  fatally  wounded  to  realize  that  the 
very  discipline  of  his  British  soldiers  was  their  undoing, 
when  contending  with  such  a  mobile  and  wily  foe  as  the 
Indian  in  the  forest,  and  that  a  few  hundred  provincials, 
skulking  behind  trees,  and  giving  their  French  and  In- 
dian antagonists  a  taste  of  their  own  tactics,  were  worth 
many  thousands  of  such  regulars  even  as  his  brave  veter- 
ans. That  he  came  to  some  conclusion  of  this  kind  before 
the  close  of  his  life  we  may  infer  from  what  Captain 
Orme  told  Franklin  and  what  Franklin  tells  us  in  the 
Autobiography, 

Captain  Orme  [says  Franklin],  who  was  one  of  the  general's 
aids-de-camp,  and,  being  grievously  wounded,  was  brought 
off  with  him,  and  continu'd  with  him  to  his  death,  which 
happen'd  in  a  few  days,  told  me  that  he  was  totally  silent  all 
the  first  day,  and  at  night  only  said  "  Who  would  have  thought 
it?"  That  he  was  silent  again  the  following  day,  saying  only 
at  last,  "  We  shall  better  know  how  to  deal  with  them  another 
time" ;  and  dy'd  in  a  few  minutes  after. 

There  was  not  to  be  another  time  for  this  intrepid  but 
reckless  soldier,  who,  true  to  the  broad,  red  banner  of 


1 82       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

England,  died  like  a  bulldog  with  his  iron  jaws  set  to  the 
last,  but  the  first  time  might  have  sufficed  for  his  task  if 
he  had  only  taken  Franklin's  hint,  or  freely  consulted  the 
advice  of  George  Washington  and  the  other  provincial 
officers  who  accompanied  him,  or  had  not  reduced  his 
army  merely  to  the  condition  of  legs  without  eyes  by 
treating  the  hundred  Indians,  invaluable  as  guides  and 
scouts,  whom  George  Croghan  had  brought  to  his  aid, 
with  such  neglect  and  slights  that  they  all,  by  successive 
defections,  gradually  dropped  away  from  him. 

In  the  Autobiography  Franklin  contrasts  the  conduct 
of  the  British  on  their  way  from  the  sea  to  the  unbroken 
wilderness  with  the  conduct  of  the  French  allies  when 
making  their  way  from  Rhode  Island  to  Yorktown. 
The  former,  he  says,  from  their  landing  till  they  got 
beyond  the  settlements,  plundered  and  stripped  the 
inhabitants,  totally  ruining  some  poor  families,  besides 
insulting,  abusing  and  confining  such  persons  as  remon- 
strated. This  was  enough,  he  adds,  to  put  the  Americans 
out  of  conceit  of  such  defenders,  if  they  had  really  wanted 
any.  The  French,  on  the  other  hand,  though  traversing 
the  most  inhabited  part  of  America  for  a  distance  of 
nearly  seven  hundred  miles,  occasioned  not  the  smallest 
complaint  for  the  loss  of  a  pig,  a  chicken,  or  even  an 
apple.  Perhaps  this  was  partly  because  the  people 
gratefully  gave  them  everything  that  they  wanted  before 
there  was  any  occasion  to  take  it.  But  it  was  the  pusillani- 
mous misbehavior  of  Colonel  Dunbar,  left  by  Braddock 
in  the  rear  of  his  army  to  bring  along  the  heavier  part  of 
his  stores,  provisions  and  baggage  which  converted  disaster 
into  disgrace.  As  soon  as  the  fugitives  from  the  battle 
reached  his  camp,  the  panic  that  they  brought  with  them 
was  instantly  imparted  to  him  and  his  entire  force. 
Though  he  had  at  his  command  more  than  a  thousand 
men,  he  thought  of  nothing  better  to  do  than  to  turn 
his  draft  horses  to  the  purposes  of  flight,  and  to  give  all 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    183 

his  stores  and  ammunition  to  the  flames.  When  he 
reached  the  settlements,  he  was  met  with  requests  from 
the  Governors  of  Virginia,  Maryland  and  Pennsylvania 
that  he  would  station  his  troops  on  the  frontier  of  those 
states  so  as  to  protect  them  from  the  fury  of  the  savages, 
but,  so  far  from  stopping  to  protect  anybody  else,  not  one 
jot  of  speed  did  he  abate  until,  to  use  Franklin's  words, 
"he  arriv'd  at  Philadelphia,  where  the  inhabitants  could 
protect  him."  "This  whole  transaction,"  declares  the 
Autobiography,  "gave  us  Americans  the  first  suspicion 
that  our  exalted  ideas  of  the  prowess  of  British  regulars 
had  not  been  well  founded.' ' 

When  Dunbar  did  abandon  the  shelter  which  he  had 
found  at  Philadelphia,  it  was  only  to  give  the  people  of 
Pennsylvania  a  parting  whiff  of  his  quality.  He  pro- 
mised Franklin  that,  if  three  poor  farmers  of  Lancaster 
County  would  meet  him  at  Trenton,  where  he  expected 
to  be  in  a  few  days  on  his  march  to  New  York,  he  would 
surrender  to  them  certain  indentured  servants  of  theirs 
whom  he  had  enlisted.  Although  they  took  him  at  his 
word,  and  met  him  at  Trenton,  at  considerable  sacrifice 
of  time  and  money,  he  refused  to  perform  his  promise. 

The  defeat  of  Braddock  and  its  consequences  left  the 
province  fully  exposed  to  Indian  incursions,  and  again 
its  ablest  and  most  public-spirited  man  was  compelled 
to  take  the  lead  in  providing  for  its  defense.  His  first  act 
was  to  draft  and  push  through  the  Assembly  a  bill  for 
organizing  and  disciplining  a  militia.  Each  company 
was  to  elect  a  captain,  a  lieutenant  and  an  ensign,  subject 
to  the  confirmation  of  the  Governor,  and  the  officers,  so 
elected,  of  the  companies  forming  each  regiment,  were 
to  elect  a  colonel,  a  lieutenant-colonel  and  a  major  for  the 
regiment,  subject  to  the  same  confirmation.  But  nothing 
about  the  bill  is  so  interesting  as  the  further  evidence  that 
it  affords  of  Franklin's  finesse  in  the  management  of 
Quakers.     The  Articles  of  Association,  provided  for  in 


184       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

the  Act,  were  to  be  purely  voluntary,  and  nothing  in  the 
Act  was  to  be  taken  as  authorizing  the  Governor  or  the 
military  officers  mentioned  in  it  to  prescribe  any  regula- 
tions that  would  in  the  least  affect  such  of  the  inhabitants 
of  the  Province  as  were  scrupulous  about  bearing  arms, 
either  in  their  liberties,  persons  or  estates.  There  is 
almost  a  gleam  of  the  true  Franklin  humor  in  the  recital 
in  the  Act,  which,  though  other  parts  of  the  Act  safe- 
guarded the  Quaker  crotchet  as  to  fighting,  made  the 
Quaker  majority  in  the  Assembly  admit  that  there  were 
some  persons  in  the  Province  who  had  been  disciplined 
in  the  art  of  war,  and  even — strange  as  that  might  be — 
conscientiously  thought  it  their  duty  to  fight  in  defense 
of  their  country,  their  wives,  their  families  and  estates. 
The  Militia  Act  was  followed  by  Franklin's  Dialogue  be- 
tween X  Y  and  Z  explaining  and  defending  it.  This  paper 
is  garnished  with  apt  references  to  the  Bible,  and,  as  .a 
whole,  is  written  with  much  vivacity  and  force.  Its 
object  was  to  convince  the  English,  Scotch-Irish  and 
German  Pennsylvanians  that  they  should  fight  to  keep 
their  own  scalps  on  their  heads  even  though  they  could 
not  do  this  without  accomplishing  as  much  for  the  Quakers. 
"For  my  part,"  says  Z,  "I  am  no  coward,  but  hang  me 
if  I'll  fight  to  save  the  Quakers."  "That  is  to  say, "  says 
X,  "you  won't  pump  ship  because  'twill  save  the  rats,  as 
well  as  yourself."  And  to  Z's  suggestion  that,  if  the  Act 
was  carried  into  execution,  and  proved  a  good  one,  they 
might  have  nothing  to  say  against  the  Quakers  at  the 
next  election,  X,  no  unknown  quantity,  but  Franklin 
himself,  replies  with  this  burst  of  eloquent  exhortation 
which  makes  us  half  doubt  Franklin  when  he  says  that 
he  was  not  an  orator: 

0  my  friends,  let  us  on  this  occasion  cast  from  us  all  these 
little  party  views,  and  consider  ourselves  as  Englishmen  and 
Pennsylvanians.     Let  us  think  only  of  the  service  of  our 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    185 

king,  the  honour  and  safety  of  our  country,  and  vengeance  on 
its  murdering  enemies.  If  good  be  done,  what  imports  it  by 
whom  'tis  done?  The  glory  of  serving  and  saving  others  is 
superior  to  the  advantage  of  being  served  or  secured.  Let  us 
resolutely  and  generously  unite  in  our  country's  cause,  (in 
which  to  die  is  the  sweetest  of  all  deaths)  and  may  the  God  of 
Armies  bless  our  honest  endeavours. 

When  the  defeat  of  Braddock  first  became  known  to 
Governor  Morris,  he  hastened  to  consult  with  Franklin 
about  the  proper  measures  for  preventing  the  desertion  of 
the  back  counties  of  Pennsylvania,  and  he  even  went  so 
far  as  to  offer  to  make  him  a  general,  if  he  would  undertake 
to  conduct  a  force  of  provincials  against  Fort  Duquesne. 
Franklin  had,  or  with  his  wise  modesty  affected  to  have,  a 
suspicion  that  the  offer  was  inspired  not  so  much  by  the 
Governor's  confidence  in  his  military  abilities  as  by  the 
Governor's  desire  to  utilize  his  great  personal  influence  for 
the  purpose  of  enlisting  soldiers  and  securing  money  to 
pay  them  with;  and  that,  perhaps,  without  the  taxation 
of  the  Proprietary  estates.  The  suspicion  we  should  say 
was  groundless.  In  the  land  of  the  blind  the  one-eyed 
mole  is  king,  and  the  probability  is  that  the  Governor 
was  actuated  by  nothing  more  than  the  belief  that  in  a 
province,  where  there  were  no  seasoned  generals,  a  man 
with  Franklin's  talents,  energy  and  resource  would  be 
likely  to  prove  the  best  impromptu  commander  that  he 
could  find.  If  so,  his  calculations  came  to  nothing,  for 
Franklin,  who  always  saw  things  as  they  were,  could 
discern  no  reason  why  he  should  be  unfit  to  be  a  colonel 
and  yet  fit  to  be  a  general.  When,  however,  the  Militia 
Act  had  been  passed,  and  Z  had  been  silenced  by  X, 
and  military  companies  were  springing  up  as  rapidly  as 
mushrooms  in  a  Pennsylvania  meadow,  he  did  permit 
himself  to  be  prevailed  upon  by  the  Governor  to  take 
charge  of  the  northwestern  frontier  of  the  Province,  and 
to  bend  his  energies  to  the  task  of  enlisting  soldiers  and 


1 86       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

erecting  forts  for  its  protection.  He  did  not  think  himself 
qualified  for  even  this  quasi-military  post,  but  posterity 
has  taken  the  liberty  of  differing  from  him  in  this  regard. 
Having  speedily  rallied  five  hundred  and  sixty  men  to  his 
standard,  and  called  his  son,  who  had  had  some  military 
training,  to  his  side,  as  his  aide-de-camp,  he  assembled  his 
little  army  at  Bethlehem,  the  chief  seat  of  the  Moravians, 
and  divided  it  into  three  detachments.  One  he  sent  off 
towards  the  Minisink  to  build  a  fort  in  the  upper  part  of 
the  exposed  territory,  another  he  sent  off  to  build  a  fort 
in  the  lower  part  of  the  same  territory,  and  the  third  he 
conducted  himself  to  Gnadenhutten,  a  Moravian  village, 
recently  reduced  to  blood  and  ashes  by  the  Indians,  for 
the  purpose  of  erecting  a  third  fort  there. 

When  he  reached  Bethlehem,  he  found  that  not  only 
had  the  Moravian  brethren,  who,  he  had  had  reason  to 
believe,  were  conscientiously  averse  to  war,  erected  a 
stockade  around  the  principal  buildings  of  the  town, 
and  purchased  a  supply  of  arms  and  ammunition  for 
themselves  in  New  York,  but  that  they  had  even  placed  a 
quantity  of  stones  between  the  windows  of  their  high 
houses,  to  be  thrown  down  by  their  women  upon  the  heads 
of  any  Indians  by  whom  these  buildings  might  be  invested. 
"Common  sense,  aided  by  present  danger,  will  sometimes 
be  too  strong  for  whimsical  opinions, "  dryly  comments 
Franklin  in  the  Autobiography. 

How  death  kept  his  court  in  that  tortured  land  may 
be  inferred  from  an  incident  recorded  by  Franklin  in 
the  Autobiography.  Just  before  he  left  Bethlehem  for 
Gnadenhutten,  eleven  farmers  who  had  been  driven  from 
their  plantations  by  the  Indians  obtained  from  him 
each  a  gun  with  a  suitable  supply  of  ammunition,  and 
returned  to  their  homes  to  fetch  away  their  cattle.  Ten  of 
the  eleven  were  killed  by  the  Indians.  The  one  who 
escaped  reported  that  they  could  not  discharge  their  guns 
because  the  priming  had  become  wet  with  rain — a  mishap 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    187 

which  the  Indians  were  too  dexterous  to  allow  to  befall 
their  pieces.  The  same  rain  descended  upon  Franklin 
and  his  men  on  their  march  from  Bethlehem  to  Gnaden- 
hutten,  and  disabled  their  guns  too,  but  fortunately, 
though  at  one  point  they  had  to  pass  through  a  gap  in 
the  mountains  which  their  foes  might  well  have  turned  to 
deadly  account,  they  were  not  attacked  on  the  march. 
Once  arrived  at  Gnadenhutten,  as  soon  as  the  detachment 
had  sheltered  itself  under  rude  huts,  and  interred  with 
more  decent  completeness  the  massacred  victims,  who 
had  been  only  half  buried  by  their  demoralized  neighbors, 
it  proceeded  to  fell  trees  and  to  erect  a  fort,  or  rather 
stockade,  with  a  circumference  of  four  hundred  and 
fifty-five  feet.  "How  bow'd  the  woods  beneath  their 
sturdy  stroke, "  was  not  more  aptly  written  of  the  peas- 
ants whom  Gray's  Elegy  has  immortalized,  than  it  might 
have  been  of  the  seventy  brawny  axemen  in  Franklin's 
camp,  two  of  whom  could  by  Franklin's  watch  in  six 
minutes  cut  down  a  pine  fourteen  inches  in  diameter. 
In  a  week,  in  spite  of  drenching  rains,  a  stockade  had  been 
constructed  of  sufficient  strength,  flimsy  as  it  was,  to 
fend  off  cannonless  Indians.  It  consisted  of  palisades 
eighteen  feet  long,  planted  in  a  trench  three  feet  deep, 
loopholes,  and  a  gallery,  at  an  elevation  of  six  feet  around 
its  interior,  for  its  defenders  to  stand  on  and  take  aim 
through  the  loopholes.  When  it  had  been  finished,  a 
swivel  gun  was  mounted  at  one  of  its  angles  and  discharged 
to  let  the  Indians  know  that  the  garrison  was  supplied 
with  such  pieces.  They  were  not  far  off;  for  when  Frank- 
lin began,  after  he  had  furnished  himself  with  a  place  of 
refuge,  in  case  of  retreat,  to  throw  out  scouting  parties 
over  the  adjacent  country,  he  found  that  they  had  been 
watching  his  movements  from  the  hills  with  their  feet 
dangling  in  holes,  in  which,  for  warmth,  fires,  made  of 
charcoal,  had  been  kindled.  With  their  fires  going  in  this 
way,  there  was  neither  light,  flame,  sparks,  nor  even 


188       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

smoke,  to  betray  their  presence;  but  it  would  seem  that 
they  were  too  few  in  numbers  to  feel  that  they  could 
hazard  an  attack  upon  the  stockade-builders. 

The  impression  left  upon  the  mind  by  this  expedition 
is  that  it  was  managed  by  Franklin  with  no  little  good 
sense  and  efficiency,  though  it  does  seem  to  us  that  a  man 
who  never  lacked  the  capacity  to  invent  any  mechanical 
device  called  for  by  his  immediate  needs  ought  to  have 
been  too  provident  to  find  himself  in  a  narrow  defile  with 
guns  as  impotent  as  those  of  the  ten  poor  farmers  who 
had  perished  that  very  day.  It  was  inexcusable  in  Poor 
Richard  at  any  rate  to  forget  his  own  saying,  "For  want  of 
a  Nail  the  Shoe  was  lost;  for  want  of  a  Shoe  the  Horse  was 
lost;  and  for  want  of  a  Horse  the  Rider  was  lost,  being 
overtaken  and  slain  by  the  Enemy;  all  for  want  of  care 
about  a  Horse-shoe  Nail."  In  his  instructions,  before  he 
left  Bethlehem,  to  Captain  Vanetta,  in  relation  to  certain 
operations,  which  the  latter  was  to  undertake  with  a 
separate  force  against  the  Indians,  Franklin,  though  he 
said  nothing  about  trusting  in  God,  took  care  to  warn 
the  captain  to  keep  his  powder  dry.  The  expedition 
was  cut  short  by  a  letter  from  the  Governor  and  letters 
from  Franklin's  friends  in  the  Assembly  urging  him  to 
attend  the  sessions  about  to  be  held  by  that  body.  There 
was  no  reason  why  he  should  not  do  so ;  for  the  three  forts 
were  completed,  and  the  country  people,  relying  upon 
the  protection  afforded  by  them,  were  content  to  remain 
on  their  farms;  and  especially  too  as  Colonel  Clapham,  a 
New  England  officer,  conversant  with  Indian  warfare, 
had  accepted  the  command  in  the  place  of  Franklin,  and 
had  been  introduced  by  the  latter  to  his  men  as  a  soldier 
much  better  fitted  to  lead  them  than  himself.  But 
Franklin,  though  he  had  never  been  engaged  in  battle, 
found  on  his  return  to  Philadelphia  that  he  had  won  a 
military  prestige  upon  which  he  could  not  easily  turn 
his  back.     He  was  elected  colonel  of  the  Philadelphia 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    189 

regiment  under  such  circumstances  that  he  was  unable 
to  again  decline  the  honor  of  a  colonelcy  on  the  score  of 
unfitness.  His  regiment  consisted  of  about  twelve 
hundred  presentable  men,  with  an  artillery  company, 
furnished  with  six  brass  field-pieces,  which  the  company 
had  become  expert  enough  to  fire  off  twelve  times  in  a 
minute. 

The  first  time  [says  Franklin  in  the  Autobiography]  I  re- 
viewed my  regiment  they  accompanied  me  to  my  house,  and 
would  salute  me  with  some  rounds  fired  before  my  door, 
which  shook  down  and  broke  several  glasses  of  my  electrical 
apparatus.  And  my  new  honour  proved  not  much  less 
brittle;  for  all  our  commissions  were  soon  after  broken  by  a 
repeal  of  the  law  in  England. 

If,  however,  his  colonelcy  had  not  been  marked  by  any 
considerable  effusion  of  blood,  he  had  acquired  fame 
enough  to  arouse  the  intense  jealousy  of  Thomas  Penn,  the 
Proprietary.  When  Franklin  was  on  the  point  of  setting 
out  on  a  journey  to  Virginia,  the  officers  of  his  regiment 
took  it  into  their  heads  to  escort  him  out  of  town  as  far 
as  the  Lower  Ferry.  This  ceremonious  proceeding  was 
unexpectedly  sprung  upon  him;  otherwise,  he  says,  he 
would  have  prevented  it,  being  naturally  averse  to  all 
flourishes  of  that  sort.  As  it  was,  just  as  he  was  getting 
on  horseback,  the  officers,  thirty  or  forty  in  number, 
came  to  his  door,  all  mounted,  and  in  their  uniforms, 
and,  as  soon  as  the  cavalcade  commenced  to  move,  made 
things  worse  by  drawing  their  swords  and  riding  with 
them  naked  the  entire  distance  to  the  Lower  Ferry.  The 
Proprietary,  when  he  heard  of  the  incident,  was  deeply 
affronted.  No  such  honor,  forsooth,  he  declared,  had 
ever  been  paid  to  him,  when  in  the  Province,  nor  to  any 
of  his  Governors,  and  was  only  proper  when  due  homage 
was  being  paid  to  princes  of  the  blood  royal ;  all  of  which 
Franklin  innocently  tells  us  might  be  so  for  aught  such  a 


190       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

novice  in  matters  of  this  kind  as  he  knew.  So  aroused 
indeed  was  the  Proprietary  by  the  affair,  coming  as  it 
did  on  the  heels  of  the  grudge  that  he  already  owed 
Franklin  for  his  part  in  insisting  that  the  Proprietary 
estates  should  sustain  their  just  share  of  the  common 
burden  of  taxation,  that  he  even  denounced  Franklin 
to  the  British  ministry  as  the  arch  obstructionist  of 
measures  for  the  King's  service,  citing  the  pomp  of  this 
occasion  as  evidence  of  the  fact  that  Franklin  harbored 
the  intention  of  taking  the  government  of  the  Province 
out  of  his  hands  by  force.  His  malice,  in  fact,  did  not 
stop  short  even  of  an  effort  to  deprive  Franklin  of  his  office 
as  Deputy  Postmaster-General  for  the  Colonies;  with  no 
effect,  however,  except  that  of  eliciting  a  gentle  admoni- 
tion to  Franklin  from  Sir  Everard  Fawkener,  the  British 
Postmaster-  General. 

Thus  ended  for  a  time  the  military  career  of  Franklin 
amid  the  crash  of  his  electrical  apparatus  and  the  gleam  of 
unfleshed  swords.  Susceptible  of  subdivision  as  his  life 
is,  it  would  hardly  justify  a  separate  chapter  on  Franklin 
the  Soldier;  but,  all  the  same,  by  the  splendidly  efficient 
service  rendered  by  him  to  Braddock,  by  his  pamphlet, 
Plain  Truth,  by  his  Articles  of  Association  and  his  battery, 
by  his  X  Y  Z  dialogue  and  Militia  Act,  by  his  tact  in 
conciliating  and  circumventing  the  awkward  Quaker 
conviction  that  "peace  unweaponed  conquers  every 
wrong, "  and  by  the  energy  and  sound  judgment  brought 
by  him  to  the  expedition  to  Gnadenhutten  he  had  estab- 
lished his  right  to  be  considered  in  war  as  well  as  in  peace 
the  man  whose  existence  could  be  less  easily  spared  than 
that  of  any  other  Pennsylvanian.  There  is  a  pleasure  in 
speculating  on  the  turn  that  his  future  might  have  taken 
if  the  terms  in  which  Braddock  recommended  him  to  the 
favor  of  the  Crown  had  been  followed  by  the  fall  of  Fort 
Duquesne  instead  of  the  battle  of  the  Monongahela. 
While  in  his  relations  to  Braddock's  expedition  he  was 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    191 

influenced,  as  he  always  was  in  every  such  case,  mainly 
by  generous  public  spirit,  yet  it  is  manifest,  too,  that  he 
was  fully  alive  to  the  significance  that  his  first  helpful 
contact  with  such  a  British  commander  as  Braddock 
might  have  for  his  own  self -advancement. 

The  sterner  stuff  in  the  character  of  Franklin,  however, 
was  to  be  still  further  tried.  During  the  year  succeeding 
his  second  return  from  England  in  1762,  the  minds  of  the 
people  in  the  western  counties  of  Pennsylvania,  and 
especially  of  the  Scotch-Irish  Presbyterians,  whose  pas- 
sions were  easily  deflected  into  channels  of  religious 
fanaticism,  were  inflamed  almost  to  madness  by  Indian 
atrocities,  and  this  mental  condition  resulted  in  an  act  of 
abominable  butchery,  such  as  has  rarely  blackened  even 
the  history  of  the  American  Indian  himself.  Living  not 
far  from  the  town  of  Lancaster,  on  the  Manor  of  Cones- 
toga,  was  the  remnant  of  what  had  once  been  a  consider- 
able tribe  of  the  Six  Nations.  The  members  of  this 
tribe  sent  messengers  to  welcome  the  first  English  settlers 
of  Pennsylvania  with  presents  of  venison,  corn  and  furs, 
and  entered  into  a  treaty  of  friendship  with  William  Penn 
which,  in  the  figurative  language  of  the  savage,  was  to  last 
"as  long  as  the  Sun  should  shine,  or  the  Waters  run  in  the 
Rivers, "  and  which  in  point  of  fact  was  faithfully  observed 
by  both  parties.  In  the  course  of  time,  as  the  whites 
purchased  land  from  them,  and  hemmed  them  in  more  and 
more  closely,  they  settled  down  upon  a  part  of  the  Manor 
assigned  to  them  by  William  Penn  which  they  were  not 
allowed  by  the  Provincial  Government  to  alienate,  and 
here  they  lived  on  terms  of  unbroken  amity  with  their 
white  neighbors.  In  the  further  course  of  time,  the  tribe 
dwindled  to  such  an  extent  that  there  were  only  twenty 
survivors,  seven  men,  five  women,  and  eight  children 
of  both  sexes,  whose  means  of  subsistence  were  supplied 
to  some  extent  by  mendicancy  and  the  chase,  but  mainly 
by  the  sale  to  the  whites  of  the  brooms,  baskets  and 


192       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

wooden  ladles  made  by  the  women.  The  oldest  of  the 
band,  a  man  named  Shehaes,  was  old  enough  to  have  been 
present  when  the  original  chain  of  friendship  between 
the  tribe  and  William  Penn  was  brightened  by  a  second 
treaty  between  the  same  contracting  parties.  The 
youngest  were  infants.  There  is  good  reason  to  believe 
that  at  least  one  or  two  of  the  band  had  been  in  secret 
commerce  with  the  hostile  Indians  whose  shocking  bar- 
barities had  filled  the  souls  of  such  of  the  Pennsylvania 
borderers  as  had  not  been  tomahawked,  carried  off  into 
captivity  or  driven  from  their  homes  with  sensations  little 
short  of  frenzied  desperation.  On  Wednesday,  the  14th 
of  December,  1763,  fifty  men  from  the  territory  about 
Paxton,  a  small  town  in  Pennsylvania,  on  the  Susquehanna 
above  Conestoga,  all  mounted,  and  armed  with  firelocks, 
hangers  and  hatchets,  descended  upon  the  squalid  huts 
of  this  band,  about  dawn,  and  slaughtered  in  cold  blood 
three  men,  two  women  and  a  young  boy — the  only  mem- 
bers of  the  vagabond  band  whom  they  found  at  home. 
The  firelocks,  hangers  and  hatchets  were  all  used  in  per- 
petrating the  bloody  work,  and  the  miserable  victims  were 
scalped  and  horribly  mangled  besides.  Shehaes  himself 
was  cut  to  pieces  in  his  bed.  Then,  after  seizing  upon 
such  booty  as  was  to  be  found,  and  applying  the  torch  to 
most  of  the  huts,  the  murderers  rode  away  through  the 
snow-drifts  to  their  homes.  A  shudder  of  horror  passed 
through  the  whites  in  the  vicinity,  and  a  cry  of  bitter 
lamentation  went  up  from  the  younger  survivors  of  the 
band  when  they  returned  to  the  sickening  spot,  where  the 
charred  bodies  of  their  parents  and  other  relations,  looking 
as  one  observer  said  like  half  burnt  logs,  told  the  hideous 
story. 

We  had  known  the  greater  part  of  them  from  children 
[said  Susannah  Wright,  a  humane  white  woman,  who  resided 
near  the  spot],  had  been  always  intimate  with  them.     Three 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    193 

or  four  of  the  women  were  sensible  and  civilized,  and  the 
Indians'  children  used  to  play  with  ours,  and  oblige  them 
all  they  could.  We  had  many  endearing  recollections  of 
them,  and  the  manner  of  effecting  the  brutal  enormity  so 
affected  us,  that  we  had  to  beg  visitors  to  forbear  to  speak 
of  it. 


The  public  officials  of  the  Province  appear  to  have 
faithfully  performed  their  duty  immediately  after  the 
tragedy.  The  survivors  were  gathered  together  by  the 
sheriff  of  Lancaster,  and  placed  in  the  workhouse  for 
safety.  A  hundred  and  forty  other  friendly  Indians, 
who  had  been  converted  by  the  Moravians,  fearing  that 
they  might  be  visited  with  just  such  violence,  had  found, 
before  the  descent  upon  Conestoga,  shelter  near  Phila- 
delphia, at  the  public  expense,  under  the  guidance  of  a 
good  Moravian  1  minister.  The  (Governor,  John  Penn, 
issued  a  proclamation  calling  upon  all  the  civil  and 
military  officers  of  the  Colony  and  all  His  Majesty's 
other  liege  subjects  to  do  their  duty.  But  the  Governor 
soon  found  that  he  was  reckoning  with  that  Scotch-Irish 
temper,  which,  at  its  highest  point  of  rigidity,  is  like 
concrete  reinforced  with  iron  rods,  and  which  in  this 
instance  was  more  or  less  countenanced  by  the  sympathy 
of  the  entire  Province.  Despite  the  proclamation  of  the 
Governor  under  the  great  seal  of  the  Colony,  the  incensed 
frontiersmen,  now  fired  by  the  fresh  taste  of  blood  as  well 
as  by  the  original  conviction  of  the  settlements  from 
which  they  came  that  an  angry  God  had  turned  his  face 
from  the  inhabitants  of  Pennsylvania,  because  they  had 
not  smitten,  hip  and  thigh,  and  utterly  destroyed  the  red- 
skinned  Amorites  and  Canaanites,  again  assembled, 
and  riding  into  Lancaster,  armed  as  on  the  previous 
occasion,  broke  in  the  door  of  its  workhouse  and  dis- 
patched every  solitary  one  of  the  poor  wretches  who  had 
escaped  their  pitiless  hands.     Thereupon,  they  mounted 

VOL.  I— 13 


194       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

their  horses,  huzzaed  in  triumph,  and  rode  off  unmolested. 
The  whole  thing  was  like  the  flight  of  the  pigeon-hawk, 
so  swift  and  deadly  was  it;  for,  within  ten  or  twelve  min- 
utes after  the  alarm  was  given,  the  borderers  were  again 
in  their  saddles.  By  a  large  part  of  the  population 
of  the  Province  the  deed  was  applauded  as  the  infliction 
of  just  vengeance  upon  a  race  which  had  many  unspeakable 
enormities  to  answer  for  in  its  relations  to  the  whites; 
by  the  people  of  the  Province  generally,  except  the 
Quakers,  it  was  but  languidly  condemned,  and  the  pro- 
clamations of  the  Governor  proved  to  be  mere  paper 
trumpets,  for  all  the  efforts  of  the  Government  to  bring 
the  criminals  to  justice  were  wholly  unsuccessful. 

But  there  was  one  man  in  the  Province,  and  he  not  a 
Quaker  either,  to  whom  justice,  mercy  and  law  had  not 
lost  their  meaning.  In  his  Narrative  of  the  Late  Massacres 
in  Lancaster  County,  Franklin,  in  words  as  burning  as  any 
ever  inspired  by  righteous  wrath,  denounced  with  blister- 
ing force  the  assassins  and  their  crimes.  Anger,  Lord 
Bacon  tells  us,  makes  even  dull  men  witty.  Just  indig- 
nation in  this  case  lifted  one  of  the  soberest  and  most 
self-contained  of  men  to  the  level  of  impassioned  feeling 
and  of  almost  lyrical  speech.  With  a  firm  yet  rapid 
hand,  Franklin  sketched  the  history  of  the  tribe,  its 
peaceful  intercourse  with  the  whites,  its  decline  until  it 
numbered  only  the  twenty  creatures  whom  he  brings 
vividly  before  us  with  a  few  familiar  strokes  of  individual 
description,  the  infamous  circumstances  that  attended 
the  destruction  of  defenseless  weakness  in  hut  and  work- 
house. Then,  along  with  illustrations  of  clemency  and 
magnanimity  derived  from  many  different  historical  and 
national  sources,  and  even  from  the  annals  of  semi- 
civilized  "and  barbarous  communities,  and  graphically 
contrasted  with  the  conduct  of  the  ruthless  men  who 
had  wreaked  their  will  upon  the  Conestoga  villagers, 
male  and  female,  and  their  children,  he  poured  out  a  tide 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    195 

of  scathing  execration  upon  the  heads  of  the  malefactors 
which  showed  as  nothing  else  in  all  his  life  ever  showed 
how  deep  were  the  fountains  that  fed  the  calm  flow  of 
his  ordinary  benevolence. 

O,  ye  unhappy  Perpetrators  of  this  horrid  Wickedness! 
[he  exclaimed,  rising  with  a  natural  crescendo  of  exalted  feeling 
even  into  the  sublimated  province  of  the  apostrophe]  reflect 
a  Moment  on  the  Mischief  ye  have  done,  the  Disgrace  ye  have 
brought  on  your  Country,  on  your  Religion,  and  your  Bible, 
on  your  Families  and  Children !  Think  on  the  Destruction  of 
your  captivated  Country-folks  (now  among  the  wild  Indians) 
which  probably  may  follow,  in  Resentment  of  your  Barbarity! 
Think  on  the  Wrath  of  the  United  Five  Nations,  hitherto  our 
Friends,  but  now  provoked  by  your  murdering  one  of  their 
Tribes,  in  Danger  of  becoming  our  bitter  Enemies.  Think  of 
the  mild  and  good  Government  you  have  so  audaciously 
insulted;  the  Laws  of  your  King,  your  Country,  and  your  God, 
that  you  have  broken;  the  infamous  Death  that  hangs  over 
your  Heads;  for  Justice,  though  slow,  will  come  at  last.  All 
good  People  everywhere  detest  your  Actions.  You  have 
imbrued  your  Hands  in  innocent  Blood;  how  will  you  make 
them  clean?  The  dying  Shrieks  and  Groans  of  the  Mur- 
dered, will  often  sound  in  your  Ears.  Their  Spectres  will 
sometimes  attend  you,  and  affright  even  your  innocent  Chil- 
dren !  Fly  where  you  will,  your  Consciences  will  go  with  you. 
Talking  in  your  Sleep  shall  betray  you,  in  the  Delirium  of  a 
Fever  you  yourselves  shall  make  your  own  Wickedness 
known. 

These  were  honest,  fearless  words,  but,  so  far  as  we 
know,  the  Erynnes  did  not  plant  any  stings  of  conscience 
in  the  breasts  of  the  men  from  Paxton  District  whom 
Franklin  elsewhere  in  this  Narrative  described  as  the 
Christian  white  savages  of  Paxton  and  Donegal.  On  the 
contrary,  several  hundred  men  from  the  same  region, 
armed  with  rifles  and  hatchets,  and  clad  in  hunting  shirts, 
marched  towards  Philadelphia  with  the  avowed  purpose  of 


196       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

killing  the  Moravian  Indians  who  had  found  refuge  in  its 
vicinity.  The  city  was  reduced  to  a  state  of  terror,  and 
Governor  Penn,  like  his  predecessors,  could  think  of 
nothing  more  expedient  to  do  than  to  invoke  the  advice 
and  assistance  of  Franklin.  He  accordingly  made 
Franklin's  house  his  headquarters,  and  freely  consulted 
with  him  touching  every  defensive  measure  required  by 
the  crisis.  Again  Franklin  formed  an  association  for  the 
protection  of  Philadelphia;  and,  under  his  auspices,  the 
citizens  of  Philadelphia  were  enrolled  into  nine  companies, 
six  of  infantry,  two  of  horse,  and  one  of  artillery.  ' '  Gov- 
ernor Penn, "  he  afterwards  declared  in  a  letter  to  Lord 
Karnes,  "made  my  house  for  some  time  his  head-quarters, 
and  did  everything  by  my  advice;  so  that,  for  about  forty- 
eight  hours,  I  was  a  very  great  man;  as  I  had  been  once 
some  years  before,  in  a  time  of  public  danger."  On  came 
the  insurgents  until  they  reached  Germantown,  seven 
miles  from  the  city.  Here  they  were  met  by  four  citizens, 
of  whom  Franklin  was  one,  who  had  been  requested  by 
the  Governor  and  his  Council  to  confer  with  them.  While 
the  conference  was  pending,  Franklin's  regiment,  sup- 
ported by  a  detachment  of  King's  troops,  remained  in  the 
city  under  arms,  and  even  young  Quakers  labored  in- 
cessantly to  complete  the  intrenchments  around  the 
barracks,  in  which  the  menaced  Indians  with  their  Mora- 
vian shepherd  had  been  placed.  Indeed,  now  that  the 
waves  of  the  Presbyterian  invasion  were  lapping  his  own 
doorsill,  the  Quaker  of  every  age  in  Philadelphia  appears 
to  have  entirely  lost  sight  of  the  duty  of  non-resistance. 
The  conference  satisfied  the  insurgents  that  graver  work 
was  ahead  of  them  than  that  of  slaying  and  scalping  old 
men,  women  and  children,  and  they  retraced  their  steps. 
"The  fighting  face  we  put  on, "  said  Franklin,  in  his  letter 
to  Lord  Karnes,  "and  the  reasonings  we  used  with  the 
insurgents,  .  .  .  having  turned  them  back  and  restored 
quiet  to  the  city,  I  became  a  less  man  than  ever;  for  I  had, 


Franklin,  the  Philanthropist  and  Citizen    197 

by  these  transactions,  made  myself  many  enemies  among 
the  populace."  He  had,  indeed,  but  not  one  whose 
enmity  was  not  more  honorable  to  him  than  the  friendship 
of  even  all  his  host  of  friends. 

Nor  did  the  eagerness  of  Franklin  to  bring  the  Paxton 
assassins  to  justice  cease  with  the  conference  at  German- 
town.  Though  pamphlets  were  sold  in  the  streets  of 
Philadelphia  lauding  their  acts,  and  inveighing  against 
all  who  had  assisted  in  protecting  the  Moravian  Indians, 
though  the  Governor  himself  was  weak  or  wicked  enough 
to  curry  political  favor  with  the  party  which  approved 
the  recent  outrages,  Franklin  still  inflexibly  maintained 
that  the  law  should  be  vindicated  by  the  condign  punish- 
ment of  the  Paxton  ringleaders.  In  another  place  we 
shall  see  what  his  resolute  stand  cost  him  politically. 


CHAPTER  IV 
franklin's  family  relations 

WHEN  we  turn  from  Franklin's  philanthropic 
zeal  and  public  spirit  to  his  more  intimate 
personal  and  social  traits,  we  find  much  that  is 
admirable,  not  a  little  that  is  lovable,  and  somethings 
with  quite  a  different  aspect.  His  vow  of  self-correction, 
when  he  had  sowed  his  wild  oats  and  reaped  the  usual 
harvest  of  smut  and  tares,  was,  as  we  have  intimated, 
retrospective  as  well  as  prospective.  He  violated  his 
obligations,  as  his  brother  James'  apprentice,  by  abscond- 
ing from  Boston  before  his  time  was  up,  and  added 
aggravation  to  his  original  offence  by  returning  to  Boston, 
and  exhibiting  his  genteel  new  suit,  watch  and  silver 
money  to  his  brother's  journeymen,  while  he  descanted  to 
them  upon  the  land  of  milk  and  honey  from  which  he  had 
brought  back  these  indicia  of  prosperity;  his  brother  all 
the  time  standing  by  grum  and  sullen,  and  struggling 
with  the  emotions  which  afterwards  caused  him  to  say 
to  his  stepmother,  when  she  expressed  her  wish  that  the 
brothers  might  become  reconciled,  that  Benjamin  had 
insulted  him  in  such  a  manner  before  his  people  that  he 
could  never  forget  or  forgive  it.  In  this,  however,  he 
was  mistaken,  as  Franklin  tersely  observes  in  the  Auto- 
biography.  Some  ten  years  subsequently,  on  his  return 
from  one  of  his  decennial  visits  to  Boston,  Franklin 
stopped  over  at  Newport,  to  see  this  brother,  who  had 

198 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  199 

removed  thither,  and  he  found  him  in  a  state  of  rapid  physi- 
cal decline.  The  former  differences  were  forgotten,  the 
meeting  was  very  cordial  and  affectionate,  and,  in  compli- 
ance with  a  request,  then  made  of  him  by  James,  Franklin 
took  James'  son,  a  boy  of  ten,  as  an  apprentice,  into 
his  own  printing  house  at  Philadelphia.  Indeed,  he  did 
more  than  he  was  asked  to  do ;  for  he  sent  the  boy  for  some 
years  to  school  before  putting  him  to  work.  Afterwards, 
when  the  nephew  became  old  enough  to  launch  out 
into  business  on  his  own  account,  Franklin  helped  him  to 
establish  himself  as  a  printer  in  New  England  with  gifts 
of  printing  materials  and  a  loan  of  more  than  two  hundred 
pounds.  Thus  was  the  first  deleatur  of  pricking  con- 
science duly  heeded  by  Franklin,  the  Printer;  the  first 
erratum  revised.  And  it  is  but  just  to  him  to  say  that 
the  erratum,  if  the  whole  truth  were  told,  was  probably 
more  venial  than  his  forgiving  spirit  allowed  him  to  fully 
disclose.  Under  the  indentures  of  apprenticeship,  it  was 
as  incumbent  upon  the  older  brother  to  abstain  from  exces- 
sive punishment  as  it  was  upon  the  younger  not  to  ab- 
scond. Franklin,  in  the  Autobiography,  while  stating 
that  James  was  passionate  and  often  beat  him,  also 
states  that  James  was  otherwise  not  an  ill-natured  man, 
and  finds  extenuation  for  his  brother's  violence  in  the 
fear  of  the  latter  that  the  success  of  the  Silence  Dogood 
letters  might  make  the  young  apprentice  vain,  and  in  the 
fact  that  the  young  apprentice  himself  was  perhaps  too 
saucy  and  provoking.  Franklin  almost  always  had  a 
word  of  generous  palliation  for  anyone  who  had  wronged 
him.  The  chances,  we  think,  distinctly  are  that  the  real 
nature  of  the  relations  between  James  and  Benjamin  are 
to  be  found  not  in  the  text  of  the  Autobiography  but  in  the 
note  to  it  in  which  its  author  declares  that  the  harsh  and 
tyrannical  treatment  of  his  brother  might  have  been  a 
means  of  impressing  him  with  that  aversion  to  arbitrary 
power  which  had  stuck  to  him  through  his  whole  life. 


200       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Nor  should  it  be  forgotten  that  the  younger  brother  did 
not  bring  the  Canaan  south  of  the  Delaware,  nor  the 
watch  and  other  evidences  of  the  good  fortune  that  he 
had  found  there,  to  the  attention  of  James'  journeymen 
until  James,  whom  he  had  called  to  see  at  the  printing 
house,  where  these  journeymen  were  employed,  had 
received  him  coldly,  looked  him  all  over,  and  turned  to  his 
work  again.  There  is  the  fact  besides,  if  Franklin  is  to 
be  permitted  to  testify  in  his  own  behalf,  that,  when  the 
disputes  between  the  two  brothers  were  submitted  to  their 
father,  whose  good  sense  and  fairness  frequently  led  him 
to  be  chosen  as  an  arbitrator  between  contending  parties, 
the  judgment  was  generally  in  Benjamin's  favor ;  either,  he 
says,  because  he  was  usually  in  the  right  (he  fancied) 
or  else  was  a  better  pleader.  Another  erratum  was  re- 
vised when,  after  plighting  his  troth  to  Deborah  Read 
on  the  eve  of  his  first  voyage  to  London,  and  then  for- 
getting it  in  the  distractions  of  the  English  capital,  he 
subsequently  married  her.  Still  another  was  revised 
when  he  discharged  the  debt  to  Mr.  Vernon,  which  occa- 
sioned him  so  much  mental  distress.  The  debt  arose 
in  this  manner:  On  his  return  journey  to  Philadelphia, 
after  his  first  visit  to  Boston,  he  was  asked  by  Mr.  Vernon, 
a  friend  of  his  brother,  John,  who  resided  at  Newport,  to 
collect  the  sum  of  thirty-five  pounds  currency  due  to  Mr. 
Vernon  in  Pennsylvania,  and  to  keep  it  until  Mr.  Vernon 
gave  him  instructions  about  its  remittance.  The  money 
was  duly  collected  by  Franklin  on  his  way  to  Philadelphia, 
but  unfortunately  for  him  his  youthful  friend  Collins, 
before  his  departure  from  Boston,  had  decided  to  re- 
move to  Pennsylvania,  too,  and  proceeding  from  Boston 
to  New  York  in  advance  of  him,  was  his  companion  from 
New  York  to  Philadelphia.  While  awaiting  Franklin's 
arrival  at  New  York,  Collins  drank  up  and  gambled 
away  all  his  own  money.  The  consequence  was  that 
Franklin  had  to  pay  his  lodging  for  him  at  New  York 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  201 

and  defray  all  his  subsequent  expenses.  The  journey 
to  Philadelphia  could  be  completed  only  with  the  aid 
of  the  Vernon  debt,  and,  after  the  two  reached  Phila- 
delphia, Collins,  being  unable  to  obtain  any  employ- 
ment because  of  his  bad  habits,  and  knowing  that 
Franklin  had  the  balance  of  the  Vernon  collection  in 
his  hands,  repeatedly  borrowed  sums  from  him,  promising 
'to  repay  them  as  soon  as  he  was  earning  something  him- 
self. By  these  loans  the  amount  collected  for  Mr.  Vernon 
was  finally  reduced  to  such  an  extent  that  Franklin  was 
at  a  painful  loss  to  know  what  he  should  do  in  case  Mr. 
Vernon  demanded  payment.  The  thought  of  his  situa- 
tion haunted  him  for  some  years  to  come,  but  happily  for 
him  Mr.  Vernon  was  an  exception  to  the  saying  of  Poor 
Richard  that  creditors  are  a  superstitious  sect,  great 
observers  of  set  days  and  times.  He  kindly  made  no 
demand  upon  Franklin  for  quite  a  long  period,  and  in  the 
end  merely  put  him  in  mind  of  the  debt,  though  not  press- 
ing him  to  pay  it;  whereupon  Franklin  wrote  to  him,  we 
are  told  by  the  Autobiography,  an  ingenuous  letter  of 
acknowledgment,  craved  his  forbearance  a  little  longer, 
which  was  granted,  and  later  on,  as  soon  as  he  was  able  to 
do  so,  paid  the  principal  with  interest  and  many  thanks. 
Just  why  Mr.  Vernon  was  such  an  indulgent  creditor  the 
Autobiography  does  not  reveal.  If,  as  Franklin  subse- 
quently wrote  to  Strahan,  the  New  England  people  were 
artful  to  get  into  debt  and  but  poor  pay,  Mr.  Vernon  at 
any  rate  furnishes  evidence  that  they  could  be  generous 
lenders.  Perhaps  Mr.  Vernon  simply  had  his  favorable 
prepossessions  like  many  other  men  who  knew  Franklin 
in  his  early  life,  or  perhaps  he  had  some  of  Franklin's  own 
quick  sympathy  with  the  trials  and  struggles  of  youth, 
and  was  not  averse  to  lending  him  the  use,  even  though 
compulsory,  of  a  little  capital,  or,  perhaps,  he  was  re- 
strained from  dunning  Franklin  by  his  friendship  for 
Franklin's  brother. 


202       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

The  erratum  into  which  Franklin  fell  in  writing  and 
publishing  his  freethinking  dissertation  on  Liberty  and 
Necessity,  Pleasure  and  Pain,  which  was  dedicated  to  his 
friend  Ralph,  he  revised,  as  we  have  seen,  by  destroying 
all  the  copies  upon  which  he  could  lay  his  hands  and  also, 
we  might  add,  by  a  counter  pamphlet  in  which  he  recanted 
and  combated  his  own  reasonings.  In  his  unreflecting 
hours  he  mixed  the  poison ;  in  his  more  reflective  hours  he 
compounded  the  antidote. 

Franklin  was  guilty  of  another  erratum  when  Ralph 
found  that  it  was  one  thing  to  have  an  essay  on  Liberty 
dedicated  to  him  by  a  friend  and  another  thing  to  have 
the  friend  taking  liberties  with  his  mistress.  This  erratum 
was  never  revised  by  Franklin  unless  upon  principles  of 
revision  with  which  Ralph  himself  at  least  could  not  find 
fault,  as  the  history  of  the  erratum  is  told  in  the  Auto- 
biography. The  young  woman  in  this  case  was  a  milliner, 
genteelly  bred,  sensible,  lively,  and  of  most  pleasing 
conversation.  Ralph,  who,  until  Pope  brought  him 
back  with  a  disillusioning  thud  to  the  dull  earth  by  a 
shaft  from  the  Dunciad,  imagined  himself  to  be  endowed 
with  an  exalted  poetic  genius,  read  plays  to  her  in  the 
evenings,  and  finally  formed  a  liaison  with  her.  They 
lived  together  for  a  time,  but,  finding  that  her  income 
was  not  sufficient  to  sustain  them  both  and  the  child  that 
was  the  fruit  of  the  connection,  he  took  charge  of  a  country 
school  where  he  taught  ten  or  a  dozen  boys  how  to  read 
and  write  at  sixpence  each  a  week,  assumed  Franklin's 
name  because  he  did  not  wish  the  world  to  know  that  he 
had  ever  been  so  meanly  employed,  recommended  his 
mistress  to  Franklin's  protection,  and,  in  spite  of  every 
dissuasive  that  Franklin  could  bring  to  bear  upon  him, 
including  a  copy  of  a  great  part  of  one  of  Young's  satires, 
which  set  forth  in  a  strong  light  the  folly  of  courting  the 
Muses,  sent  to  Franklin  from  time  to  time  profuse  speci- 
mens of  the  magnum  opus  over  which  he  was  toiling.      In 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  203 

the  meantime,  the  milliner,  having  suffered  on  Ralph's 
account  in  both  reputation  and  estate,  was  occasionally 
compelled  to  obtain  pecuniary  assistance  from  Franklin. 
The  result  was  that  he  grew  fond  of  her  society,  and, 
presuming  upon  his  importance  to  her,  attempted  famil- 
iarities with  her  which  she  repelled  with  a  proper  resent- 
ment, and  communicated  to  Ralph,  who,  on  his  next 
return  to  London,  let  Franklin  know  that  he  considered 
all  his  obligations  to  him  cancelled.  As  these  obligations 
consisted  wholly  of  sums  that  Franklin  had  lent  to  Ralph, 
or  advanced  on  Ralph's  account  from  time  to  time  out 
of  his  earnings  from  his  vocation  as  a  printer,  Franklin, 
we  suppose,  might  fairly  conclude,  in  accordance  with 
Ralph's  method  of  reasoning,  that  he  had  revised  the 
erratum  by  duly  paying  the  penalty  for  it  in  terms  of  money, 
even  if  in  no  other  form  of  atonement.  At  the  time,  he 
consoled  himself  with  the  reflection  that  Ralph's  can- 
cellation of  obligations,  which  he  had  no  means  of  paying, 
was  not  very  material,  and  that  Ralph's  withdrawal  of  his 
friendship  at  least  meant  relief  from  further  pecuniary 
loans.  He  does  not  say  so,  but  exemption  from  further 
instalments  of  the  laboring  epic  must  have  counted  for 
something  too.  The  cross-currents  of  human  existence, 
however,  were  destined  to  again  bring  Ralph  and  Franklin 
into  personal  intercourse.  It  was  after  Franklin  had 
arrived  in  England  in  1757  as  the  agent  of  the  People  of 
Pennsylvania  and  Ralph,  not  a  Homer  or  Milton,  as  he 
had  fondly  hoped  to  be,  but  a  historian,  pamphleteer  and 
newspaper  writer  of  no  contemptible  abilities,  had  gotten 
beyond  the  necessity  of  doing  what  Pope  in  a  truculent 
note  to  the  Dunciad  had  charged  him  with  doing,  namely, 
writing  on  both  sides  of  a  controversy  on  one  and  the  same 
day,  and  afterwards  publicly  justifying  the  morality  of 
his  conduct.  Indeed,  he  had  gotten  far  enough  beyond  it 
at  this  stage  of  his  life  to  be  even  a  sufferer  from  the  gout, 
and,  remarkable  as  it  may  seem,  in  the  light  of  the  manner 


204       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

in  which  he  had  paid  his  indebtedness  to  Franklin,  to  be 
equal  to  the  nicety  of  returning  to  the  Duke  of  Bedford 
one  hundred  and  fifty  of  the  two  hundred  pounds  that  the 
Duke  of  Bedford  had  contributed  to  the  support  of  the 
Protestor,  a  newspaper  conducted  by  Ralph  in  the  interest 
of  the  Duke  of  Bedford  against  the  Duke  of  Newcastle. 
The  Autobiography  states  that  from  Governor  Denny 
Franklin  had  previously  learned  that  Ralph  was  still 
alive,  that  he  was  esteemed  one  of  the  best  political  writers 
in  England,  had  been  employed  in  the  dispute  between 
Prince  Frederick  and  the  King,  and  had  obtained  a  pen- 
sion of  three  hundred  a  year;  that  his  reputation  was 
indeed  small  as  a  poet,  Pope  having  damned  his  poetry  in 
the  Dunciad,  but  that  his  prose  was  thought  as  good  as 
any  man's.  A  few  months  after  receiving  this  information, 
Franklin  arrived  in  England,  and  Ralph  called  on  him 
to  renew  the  tie  sundered  for  some  thirty  years.  One 
sequel  was  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  his  wife  in  which  he 
wrote  to  her  as  follows: 

I  have  seen  Mr.  Ralph,  and  delivered  him  Mrs.  Garrigues's 
letter.  He  is  removed  from  Turnham  Green,  when  I  return, 
I  will  tell  you  everything  relating  to  him,  in  the  meantime  I 
must  advise  Mrs.  Garrigue  not  to  write  to  him  again,  till  I 
send  her  word  how  to  direct  her  letters,  he  being  unwilling, 
for  some  good  reasons,  that  his  present  wife  should  know 
anything  of  his  having  any  connections  in  America.  He 
expresses  great  affection  for  his  daughter  and  grandchildren. 
He  has  but  one  child  here. 

Other  errata  of  Franklin  were  due  to  the  amorous  dis- 
position over  which  he  took  such  little  pains  to  draw  the 
veil  of  delicacy  and  reserve.  Sexual  ardor  has  doubtless 
exerted  quite  as  imperious  a  dominion  in  youth  over  some 
other  great  men,  but  none  of  them  have  been  so  willing 
to  confess  the  overbearing  force  of  its  importunities. 
Speaking  of  the  time  prior  to  his  marriage,  when  he  was 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  205 

twenty-four  years  of  age,  Franklin  says  in  the  Auto- 
biography: "In  the  meantime,  that  hard-to-be-governed 
passion  of  youth  hurried  me  frequently  into  intrigues  with 
low  women  that  fell  in  my  way,  which  were  attended  with 
some  expense  and  great  inconvenience,  besides  a  continual 
risque  to  my  health  by  a  distemper  which  of  all  things  I 
dreaded,  though  by  great  good  luck  I  escaped  it."  It  was 
to  his  son,  strangely  enough,  that  this  chapter  of  his 
personal  history  was  unfolded.  Franklin  was  writing  a 
word  of  warning  as  well  as  of  hope  for  his  posterity,  and 
he  painted  himself,  as  Cromwell  wished  to  be  painted, 
wart  and  all. 

For  such  errata  as  these  there  was  no  atonement  to  be 
made  except  in  the  sense  of  self-degradation  likely,  in  the 
case  of  every  self-respecting  man,  to  follow  the  illicit 
gratification  of  strong  physical  appetites,  and  this  Franklin 
had  too  ingenuous  a  way  of  looking  at  sexual  irregularity 
to  feel  very  acutely.  The  only  real  reinforcement  that  a 
nature  like  his  could  find  against  what  Ferdinand  in  the 
Tempest  calls  the  suggestions  of  "our  worser  genius" 
was  the  sedative  influence  of  marriage,  its  duties,  its 
responsibilities,  and  its  calm  equable  flow  of  mutual 
affection;  and  Franklin  was  early  married  and  found  in 
marriage  and  the  human  interests  that  cluster  about  it  an 
uncommon  measure  of  satisfaction  and  happiness. 

It  is  an  old,  old  story,  that  story  of  Benjamin  and 
Deborah  told  in  the  Autobiography.  It  began  on  the 
memorable  Sunday  morning,  when  the  runaway  appren- 
tice, shortly  after  landing  at  the  Market  Street  wharf  in 
Philadelphia,  hungry,  dirty  from  his  journey,  dressed 
in  his  working  clothes,  and  with  his  great  flap  pockets 
stuffed  with  shirts  and  stockings,  passed  up  Market 
Street  before  the  eyes  of  his  future  wife,  which  were  alit 
with  merriment  as  he  passed,  clasping  a  great  puffy 
Philadelphia  roll  under  each  arm  and  eating  a  third. 
She  saw  him  from  her  father's  door  as  he  went  by,  present- 


206       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

ing  this  "awkward,  ridiculous  appearance,"  and  tittle 
realized  that  the  ludicrous  apparition  which  she  saw  was 
not  only  to  be  her  lifelong  consort,  but,  stranger  as  he 
then  was  to  every  human  being  in  Philadelphia,  was  in 
coming  years  to  confer  upon  that  city  no  small  part  of  the 
heritage  of  his  own  imperishable  renown. 

The  pair  were  soon  brought  into  close  relations  with  each 
other.  Keimer,  the  printer,  with  whom  Benjamin  found 
employment,  could  not  lodge  Benjamin  in  his  own  house 
for  lack  of  furniture;  so  he  found  lodging  for  him  with 
Mr.  Read,  Keimer's  landlord  and  Deborah's  father.  And 
Benjamin  was  now  in  a  very  different  plight  from  that  in 
which  she  had  first  seen  him;  for  he  was  earning  a  liveli- 
hood for  himself,  and  his  chest  with  better  clothes  in 
it  than  those  that  he  had  on  when  he  was  eating  his  roll 
under  such  difficulties  had  come  around  to  him  by  sea. 
He  was  not  long  in  forming  ' '  a  great  respect  and  affection  " 
for  Deborah,  which  he  had  some  reason  to  believe  were 
reciprocated  by  her.  Courtship  followed,  but  he  was  on 
the  point  of  setting  out  for  London  on  the  fool's  errand 
which  Governor  Keith  had  planned  for  him,  he  and  Debo- 
rah were  but  a  little  over  eighteen,  and  her  mother  thought 
that  it  would  be  more  convenient  for  the  marriage  to  take 
place  on  his  return,  after  he  had  purchased  in  London  the 
printing  outfit  that  he  was  to  buy  upon  the  credit  of 
Governor  Keith,  who  really  had  no  credit.  "Perhaps, 
too, "  adds  Franklin,  "she  thought  my  expectations  not  so 
well  founded  as  I  imagined  them  to  be." 

The  fateful  day  came  when  the  annual  ship  between 
London  and  Philadelphia  was  to  sail.  Of  the  fond  parting 
we  have  no  record  except  Franklin's  old  fashioned  state- 
ment that  in  leaving  he  "interchang'd  some  promises  with 
Miss  Read."  These  promises,  so  far  as  he  was  concerned, 
were  soon  lost  to  memory  in  the  lethean  cares,  diversions 
and  dissipations  of  eighteenth  century  London.  By  de- 
grees, Franklin  tells  us,  he  forgot  his  engagements  with 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  207 

Miss  Read,  and  never  wrote  more  than  one  letter  to  her, 
and  that  to  let  her  know  that  he  was  not  likely  to  return 
soon.  "This,"  he  says,  "was  another  of  the  great  errata 
of  my  life,  which  I  should  wish  to  correct  if  I  were  to  live  it 
over  again."  Another  of  those  errata  of  his  life,  he  might 
have  added,  in  regard  to  which,  like  his  use  of  Mr.  Vernon's 
money,  his  approaches  to  Ralph's  mistress,  and  his  com- 
merce with  lewd  wenches,  the  world,  with  which  silence 
often  passes  as  current  as  innocence,  would  never  have 
been  the  wiser,  if  he  had  not  chosen,  as  so  few  men  have 
been  sufficiently  courageous  and  disinterested  to  do,  to 
make  beacons  of  his  own  sins  for  others  to  steer  their 
lives  by.  He  did  return,  as  we  know,  but  Miss  Read  was 
Miss  Read  no  longer.  In  his  absence,  her  friends,  de- 
spairing of  his  return  after  the  receipt  of  his  letter  by 
Deborah  (how  mercilessly  he  divulges  it  all),  had  per- 
suaded her  to  marry  another,  one  Rogers,  a  pot- 
ter, "a  worthless  fellow,  tho'  an  excellent  workman, 
which  was  the  temptation  to  her  friends."  With  him, 
however,  Franklin  tells  us,  "she  was  never  happy,  and 
soon  parted  from  him,  refusing  to  cohabit  with  him  or  bear 
his  name,  it  being  now  said  that  he  had  another  wife." 
One  more  concise  statement  from  Rogers's  marital  suc- 
cessor, and  Rogers  disappears  as  suddenly  as  if  shot 
through  a  stage  trap-door.  "He  got  into  debt,  ran  away 
in  1727  or  1728,  went  to  the  West  Indies,  and  died  there." 
At  that  time,  the  West  Indies  seem  to  have  been  the  dust- 
pan into  which  all  the  human  refuse  of  colonial  America 
was  swept. 

In  a  letter  to  his  friend  Catherine  Ray,  in  1755,  Franklin 
told  her  that  the  cords  of  love  and  friendship  had  in  times 
past  drawn  him  further  than  from  Rhode  Island  to 
Philadelphia,  "even  back  from  England  to  Philadelphia." 
This  statement,  we  fear,  if  not  due  to  the  facility  with 
which  every  good  husband  is  apt  to  forget  that  his  wife 
was  not  the  first  woman  that  he  fell  in  love  with,  must  be 


208       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

classed  with  Franklin's  statement  in  the  Autobiography 
that  Sir  Hans  Sloane  persuaded  him  to  let  him  add  an 
asbestos  purse  owned  by  Franklin  to  his  museum  of 
curiosities,  his  statement  in  a  letter  to  his  son  that  he  was 
never  sued  until  a  bill  in  chancery  was  filed  against  him 
after  his  removal  from  the  office  of  Deputy  Postmaster- 
General,  and  his  statement  made  at  different  times  that  he 
never  asked  for  a  public  office.  We  know  from  Franklin's 
own  pen  that  it  was  he  who  solicited  from  Sir  Hans  Sloane 
the  purchase,  and  not  Sir  Hans  Sloane  who  solicited  from 
him  the  sale,  of  the  asbestos  purse;  we  know  from  the 
Autobiography  that  he  was  sued  by  some  of  the  farmers  to 
whom  he  gave  his  bond  of  indemnity  at  the  time  of 
Braddock's  expedition  long  before  his  removal  from  the 
office  of  Deputy  Postmaster-General,  and  we  know,  too, 
as  the  reader  has  already  been  told,  that  he  sought  Benger's 
office,  as  Deputy  Postmaster-General  of  the  Colonies, 
before  death  had  done  more  than  cast  the  shadow  of  his 
approach  over  Benger's  face.  There  is  a  vast  difference 
between  the  situation  of  a  man,  who  relies  upon  his 
memory  for  the  scattered  incidents  of  his  past  life,  and 
that  of  a  biographer  whose  field  of  vision  takes  them 
all  in  at  one  glance.  It  is  true  that  Franklin  did  not 
know,  before  he  left  London,  that  Deborah  had  married, 
but  the  reasons  he  gives  in  the  Autobiography  for  desiring 
to  return  to  Philadelphia  are  only  that  he  had  grown  tired 
of  London,  remembered  with  pleasure  the  happy  months 
that  he  had  spent  in  Pennsylvania,  and  wished  again  to 
see  it.  The  fact  is  that  he  did  not  renew  his  courtship 
of  Deborah  until  the  worthless  Rogers  had  left  the  coast 
clear  by  fleeing  to  the  West  Indies,  and  he  himself  had  in  a 
measure  been  thrown  back  upon  her  by  rebuffs  in  other 
directions.  His  circuitous  proposal  after  his  return  to  a 
young  relative  of  Mrs.  Godfrey,  who  with  her  husband 
and  children  occupied  a  part  of  his  house,  was,  as  described 
in  the  Autobiography  more  like  a  negotiation  for  a  printing 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  209 

outfit  than  ordinary  wooing.  If  the  love  that  he  brought 
to  this  affair  had  been  the  only  kind  of  which  he  was 
capable,  his  most  ardent  biographer,  and  every  biographer 
seems  to  adore  him  more  or  less  in  spite  of  occasional 
sharp  shocks  to  adoration,  might  well  ask  whether  his  love 
was  not  as  painfully  repellent  as  his  system  of  morals. 
The  incident  would  lose  some  of  its  hard,  homely  outlines 
if  clothed  in  any  but  the  coarse,  drab  vesture  of  plain- 
spoken  words  with  which  Franklin  clothes  it. 

Mrs.  Godfrey  [he  says  in  the  Autobiography]  projected  a 
match  for  me  with  a  relation's  daughter,  took  opportunities 
of  bringing  us  often  together,  till  a  serious  courtship  on  my 
part  ensu'd,  the  girl  being  in  herself  very  deserving.  The  old 
folks  encourag'd  me  by  continual  invitations  to  supper,  and  by 
leaving  us  together,  till  at  length  it  was  time  to  explain.  Mrs. 
Godfrey  manag'd  our  little  treaty.  I  let  her  know  that  I 
expected  as  much  money  with  their  daughter  as  would  pay 
off  my  remaining  debt  for  the  printing  house,  which  I  believe 
was  not  then  above  a  hundred  pounds.  She  brought  me  word 
they  had  no  such  sum  to  spare;  I  said  they  might  mortgage 
their  house  in  the  loan-office.  The  answer  to  this,  after  some 
days,  was,  that  they  did  not  approve  the  match;  that,  on 
inquiry  of  Bradford,  they  had  been  informed  the  printing 
business  was  not  a  profitable  one;  the  types  would  soon  be 
worn  out,  and  more  wanted;  that  S.  Keimer  and  D.  Harry  had 
failed  one  after  the  other,  and  I  should  probably  soon  follow 
them;  and,  therefore,  I  was  forbidden  the  house,  and  the 
daughter  shut  up. 

Whether  this  was  a  real  change  of  sentiment  or  only  artifice, 
on  a  supposition  of  our  being  too  far  engaged  in  aflection  to 
retract,  and  therefore  that  we  should  steal  a  marriage,  which 
would  leave  them  at  liberty  to  give  or  withhold  what  they 
pleas'd,  I  know  not;  but  I  suspected  the  latter,  resented  it, 
and  went  no  more.  Mrs.  Godfrey  brought  me  afterward 
some  more  favorable  accounts  of  their  disposition,  and  would 
have  drawn  me  on  again ;  but  I  declared  absolutely  my  resolu- 
tion to  have  nothing  more  to  do  with  that  family.     This  was 

VOL.  1— 14 


210       Benjamin  Franklin,  Self-Revealed 

resented  by  the  Godfreys;  we  differ'd,  and  they  removed,  leav- 
ing me  the  whole  house. 

This  affair,  however,  Franklin  tells  us,  turned  his 
thoughts  to  marriage.  He  accordingly  looked  the  matri- 
monial field,  or  rather  market,  over,  and,  to  use  his  own 
euphemism,  made  overtures  of  acquaintance  in  other 
places;  but  he  soon  found,  he  further  tells  us,  that,  the 
business  of  a  printer  being  generally  thought  a  poor  one, 
he  was  not  to  expect  money  with  a  wife  unless  with  such  a 
one  as  he  should  not  otherwise  think  agreeable.  Then 
it  was  that  his  heart  came  back  to  Deborah,  sitting  forlorn 
in  the  weeds  of  separation,  though  not  unquestionably 
in  the  weeds  of  widowhood;  for  it  was  not  entirely  certain 
that  Rogers  was  dead.  A  friendly  intercourse  had  been 
maintained  all  along  between  Franklin  and  the  members 
of  her  family  ever  since  he  had  first  lodged  under  their 
roof,  and  he  had  often  been  invited  to  their  home,  and 
had  given  them  sound  practical  advice.  It  was  natural 
enough,  therefore,  that  he  should  pity  Miss  Read's  un- 
fortunate situation  (he  never  calls  her  Mrs.  Rogers), 
dejected  and  averse  to  society  as  she  was,  that  he  should 
reproach  himself  with  his  inconstancy  as  the  cause  of  her 
unhappiness,  though  her  mother  was  good  enough  to 
take  the  whole  blame  on  herself  because  she  had  prevented 
their  marriage  before  he  went  off  to  London,  and  was 
responsible  for  the  other  match,  and  that  compassion 
and  self -accusation  should  have  been  gradually  succeeded 
by  tenderness  and  rekindled  affection.  The  result  was  a 
marriage  as  little  attended  by  prudential  considerations 
as  any  that  we  could  readily  imagine ;  and  the  words  in 
which  Franklin  chronicles  the  event  are  worthy  of  exact 
reproduction : 

Our  mutual  affection  was  revived,  but  there  were  now  great 
objections  to  our  union.  The  match  was  indeed  looked  upon 
as  invalid,  a  preceding  wife  being  said  to  be  living  in  England; 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  211 

but  this  could  not  easily  be  prov'd,  because  of  the  distance; 
and,  tho'  there  was  a  report  of  his  death,  it  was  not  certain. 
Then,  tho'  it  should  be  true,  he  had  left  many  debts,  which 
his  successor  might  be  call'd  upon  to  pay.  We  ventured, 
however,  over  all  these  difficulties,  and  I  took  her  to  wife, 
September  1st,  1730.  None  of  the  inconveniences  happened 
that  we  had  apprehended;  she  proved  a  good  and  faithful 
helpmate,  assisted  me  much  by  attending  the  shop;  we  throve 
together,  and  have  ever  mutually  endeavour' d  to  make  each 
other  happy. 

This  paragraph  from  the  Autobiography  does  not  con- 
tain the  only  tribute  paid  by  Franklin  to  his  wife  as  a 
faithful  helpmeet.  Elsewhere  in  that  work  we  find  this 
tribute  too:  "We  have  an  English  proverb  that  says, 
'He  that  would  thrive,  must  ask  his  wife.*  It  was  lucky  for 
me  that  I  had  one  as  much  dispos'd  to  industry  and  fru- 
gality as  myself.  She  assisted  me  chearfully  in  my  busi- 
ness, folding  and  stitching  pamphlets,  tending  shop, 
purchasing  old  linen  rags  for  the  paper-makers,  etc.,  etc." 
His  letters  are  of  the  same  tenor.  In  one  to  her  after  the 
repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  he  wrote,  "Had  the  Trade  be- 
tween the  two  Countries  totally  ceas'd,  it  was  a  Comfort 
to  me  to  recollect,  that  I  had  once  been  cloth' d  from  Head 
to  Foot  in  Woolen  and  Linnen  of  my  Wife's  Manufacture." 
Many  years  after  Deborah's  death,  he  used  these  words  in 
a  letter  to  Miss  Alexander:  "Frugality  is  an  enriching 
Virtue ;  a  Virtue  I  never  could  acquire  in  myself ;  but  I  was 
once  lucky  enough  to  find  it  in  a  Wife,  who  thereby  became 
a  Fortune  to  me.  Do  you  possess  it?  If  you  do,  and  I 
were  20  Years  younger,  I  would  give  your  Father  1,000 
Guineas  for  you."  And  then  he  adds  with  the  playful 
humor  which  came  to  him  as  naturally  as  a  carol  to  the 
throat  of  a  blithe  bird:  "I  know  you  would  be  worth 
more  to  me  as  a  Mennagere,  but  I  am  covetous,  and  love 
good  Bargains."  Win  an  industrious  and  prudent  wife, 
he  declared  on  another  occasion,  and,  "if  she  does  not 


212       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

bring  a  fortune,  she  will  help  to  make  one."  And  when  his 
daughter  Sally  married  Richard  Bache,  he  wrote  to  her 
that  she  could  be  as  serviceable  to  her  husband  in  keeping 
a  store,  if  it  was  where  she  dwelt,  "as  your  Mother  was  to 
me:  For  you  are  not  deficient  in  Capacity,  and  I  hope 
are  not  too  proud."  Sixteen  years  after  his  marriage,  in 
a  rhyming  preface  to  Poor  Richard's  Almanac,  he  even 
penned  this  grateful  jingle : 

"Thanks  to  kind  Readers  and  a  careful  Wife, 
With  plenty  bless'd,  I  lead  an  easy  Life." 

Careful,  however,  as  she  had  been  in  her  earlier  years, 
Deborah  spent  enough,  as  she  became  older  and  more 
accustomed  to  easy  living,  to  make  him  feel  that  he  should 
say  a  word  of  caution  to  her  when  the  news  reached  him 
in  London  that  Sally  was  about  to  marry  a  young  man 
who  was  not  only  without  fortune  but  soon  to  be  involved 
in  business  failure.  He  advises  her  not  to  make  an 
"expensive  feasting  Wedding, "  but  to  conduct  everything 
with  the  economy  required  by  their  circumstances  at  that 
time;  his  partnership  with  Hall  having  expired,  and  his 
loss  of  the  Post  Office  not  being  unlikely.  In  that  event, 
he  said,  they  would  be  reduced  to  their  rents  and  interest 
on  money  for  a  subsistence,  which  would  by  no  means 
afford  the  chargeable  housekeeping  and  entertainments 
that  they  had  been  used  to.  Though  he  himself  lived  as 
frugally  as  possible,  making  no  dinners  for  anybody,  and 
contenting  himself  with  a  single  dish,  when  he  dined  at 
home,  yet  such  was  the  dearness  of  living  in  London  in 
every  article  that  his  expenses  amazed  him. 

I  see  too  [he  continued],  by  the  Sums  you  have  received  in 
my  Absence,  that  yours  are  very  great,  and  I  am  very  sensible 
that  your  Situation  naturally  brings  you  a  great  many  Visitors, 
which  occasion  an  Expence  not  easily  to  be  avoided  especially 
when  one  has  been  long  in  the  Practice  and  Habit  of  it.    If 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  213 

we  were  young  enough  to  begin  Business  again  [he  remarks 
a  little  later  in  this  letter],  it  might  be  another  Matter, — 
but  I  doubt  we  are  past  it;  and  Business  not  well  managed 
ruins  one  faster  than  no  Business.  In  short,  with  Frugality 
and  prudent  Care  we  may  subsist  decently  on  what  we  have, 
and  leave  it  entire  to  our  Children: — but  without  such  Care, 
we  shall  not  be  able  to  keep  it  together;  it  will  melt  away  like 
Butter  in  the  Sunshine;  and  we  may  live  long  enough  to  feel  the 
miserable  Consequences  of  our  Indiscretion. 

Eighteen  months  later,  with  studied  good-feeling,  he 
tells  her  that,  if  he  does  not  send  her  a  watch,  it  will  be 
because  the  balance  on  his  Post  Office  account  was  greatly 
against  him,  owing  to  the  large  sums  that  she  had  received. 
But  Mrs.  Franklin  was  failing,  and  a  few  years  later,  when 
her  memory  and  other  faculties  had  been  enfeebled  by 
paralysis,  he  found  it  necessary  to  give  a  keener  edge  to 
admonition  in  one  of  his  letters  to  her.  Referring  to  her 
disgust  with  the  Messrs.  Foxcroft,  because  they  had  not 
supplied  her  with  money  to  pay  for  a  bill  of  exchange  for 
thirty  pounds,  he  opened  his  mind  to  her  with  almost 
cruel  bluntness  as  follows: 

That  you  may  not  be  offended  with  your  Neighbours  with- 
out Cause;  I  must  acquaint  you  with  what  it  seems  you  did 
not  know,  that  I  had  limited  them  in  their  Payments  to  you, 
to  the  sum  of  Thirty  Pounds  per  Month,  for  the  sake  of  our 
more  easily  settling,  and  to  prevent  Mistakes.  This  making 
360  Pounds  a  Year,  I  thought,  as  you  have  no  House  Rent 
to  pay  yourself,  and  receive  the  Rents  of  7  or  8  Houses  be- 
sides, might  be  sufficient  for  the  Maintenance  of  your  Family. 
I  judged  such  a  Limitation  the  more  necessary,  because  you 
never  have  sent  me  any  Account  of  your  Expences,  and 
think  yourself  ill-used  if  I  desire  it;  and  because  I  know  you 
were  not  very  attentive  to  Money-matters  in  your  best  Days, 
and  I  apprehend  that  your  Memory  is  too  much  impair'd  for 
the  Management  of  unlimited  Sums,  without  Danger  of 
injuring  the  future  Fortune  of  your  daughter  and  Grandson. 


214       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

If  out  of  more  than  500  £  a  Year,  you  could  have  sav'd  enough 
to  buy  those  Bills  it  might  have  been  well  to  continue  purchas- 
ing them.  But  I  do  not  like  your  going  about  among  my 
Friends  to  borrow  Money  for  that  purpose,  especially  as 
it  is  not  at  all  necessary.  And  therefore  I  once  more  request 
that  you  would  decline  buying  them  for  the  future.  And 
I  hope  you  will  no  longer  take  it  amiss  of  Messrs.  Foxcrofts  that 
they  did  not  supply  you.  If  what  you  receive  is  really  in- 
sufficient for  your  support  satisfy  me  by  Accounts  that  it  is 
so,  and  I  shall  order  more. 

Like  an  incision  in  the  rind  of  a  beech,  which  spreads 
wider  and  wider  with  each  passing  year,  is,  as  a  rule, 
every  human  failing,  as  time  goes  on,  and  poor  Mrs. 
Franklin,  now  that  senile  decay  was  setting  in,  seems  to 
have  been  but  another  confirmation  of  this  truth.  But 
faithful  wife  that  she  was,  after  the  receipt  of  this  letter 
from  her  husband,  she  was  scrupulous  enough  to  send  him 
receipts  as  well  as  accounts;  for  in  the  early  part  of  the 
succeeding  year  he  writes  to  her:  "I  take  notice  of  the 
considerable  Sums  you  have  paid.  I  wrould  not  have 
you  send  me  any  Receipts.  I  am  satisfy 'd  with  the 
Accounts  you  give."  His  letter  to  her  about  the  Fox- 
crofts was  doubtless  not  more  pointed  than  the  occasion 
required.  In  no  scales  was  the  salutary  medicine  of  re- 
proof ever  weighed  more  exactly  than  in  his.  This  letter 
begins  as  usual,  "My  Dear  Child,"  and,  after  conveying 
its  rebuke,  lapses  into  the  old  happy,  domestic  strain. 
"I  am  much  pleased,"  he  said,  "with  the  little  Histories 
you  give  me  of  your  fine  boy  (one  of  her  grandsons)  which 
are  confirmed  by  all  that  have  seen  him.  I  hope  he  will  be 
spared  and  continue  the  same  Pleasure  and  Comfort  to  you, 
and  that  I  shall  ere  long  partake  with  you  in  it."  One 
instance,  perhaps,  of  inattention  to  money-matters  upon 
the  part  of  Mrs.  Franklin,  which  helped  to  produce  the 
climax  of  this  letter,  was  in  the  case  of  a  certain  Sarah 
Broughton,  who,  if  we  may  judge  from  a  single  specimen  of 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  215 

her  spicy  humor,  was  something  of  a  tartar.  On  July  1, 
1766,  she  wrote  to  Franklin  that  his  wife  owed  her  a 
certain  sum  of  money  and  also  the  price  of  a  bed,  which 
she  had  kept  for  two  years,  but  now  wanted  to  return, 
because  there  had  been  a  decline  in  the  price  of  feathers. 
She  had  written,  the  writer  said,  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Franklin 
on  the  subject,  but  had  received  the  reply  from  her  "that 
she  did  not  know  me,  and  that  I  might  write  to  you  she  was 
an  hegehog. ' '  "Now  sir, ' '  continued  Franklin's  correspond- 
ent, "I  don't  think  her  a  hegehog  but  in  reallity  she  has 
shot  a  great  many  quills  at  me,  but  thank  Heaven  none 
of  them  has  or  can  hurt  me  as  I  doubt  not  that  your 
known  justice  will  induce  you  to  order  the  above  sum  of 
seven  pounds,  seven  shillings  payed."  The  keen  eye  that 
Mrs.  Franklin  had  in  this  instance  to  fluctuations  in  the 
market  price  of  an  article,  which  her  husband  and  herself 
had  frequently  bought  and  sold  at  their  shop  in  the  past, 
shows  plainly  enough  that,  even  when  she  was  on  the  eve 
of  her  grand  climacteric,  the  thriftier  instincts  of  her  early 
life  were  not  wholly  dead.  Nor  does  she  seem  to  have 
reserved  all  her  quills  for  obdurate  creditors.  From  the 
Diary  of  Daniel  Fisher  we  obtain  the  following  entry: 

As  I  was  coming  down  from  my  chamber  this  afternoon  a 
gentlewoman  was  sitting  on  one  of  the  lowest  stairs  which 
were  but  narrow,  and  there  not  being  room  enough  to  pass,  she 
rose  up  and  threw  herself  upon  the  floor  and  sat  there.  Mr. 
Soumien  and  his  wife  gently  entreated  her  to  arise  and  take  a 
chair,  but  in  vain;  she  would  keep  her  seat,  and  kept  it,  I 
think,  the  longer  for  their  entreaty.  This  gentlewoman, 
whom  though  I  had  seen  before  I  did  not  know,  appeared  to 
be  Mrs.  Franklin.  She  assumed  the  airs  of  extraordinary 
freedom  and  great  humility,  lamented  heavily  the  misfortunes 
of  those  who  are  unhappily  infected  with  a  too  tender  or 
benevolent  disposition,  said  she  believed  all  the  world  claimed 
a  privilege  of  troubling  her  Pappy  (so  she  usually  calls  Mr. 
Franklin)  with  their  calamities  and  distresses,  giving  us  a 


2i 6       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

general  history  of  many  such  wretches  and  their  impertinent 
applications  to  him. 

Just  what  all  this  meant  is  not  entirely  clear.  Perhaps 
it  was  only  real  sympathy  excited  by  the  harassments  to 
which  her  husband,  whom  she  devotedly  loved,  was  in- 
cessantly subjected  by  his  public  activity,  his  reputation 
for  wise  counsel,  and  his  ever-increasing  renown.  Perhaps 
it  was  the  mere  jealousy  of  affection  inspired  by  her 
sense  of  her  own  unfitness  in  point  of  education  and 
intellectual  companionship  to  be  the  wife  of  a  man  whose 
doorstep  could  be  so  haunted.  After  this  incident  the 
diarist  became  Franklin's  clerk,  and  lived  in  his  house — a 
footing  which  enabled  him  to  give  us  a  truer  insight  than 
we  should  otherwise  have  had  as  to  the  extent  to  which 
William  Franklin  was  at  one  time  a  festering  thorn  in  the 
side  of  Mrs.  Franklin. 

Mr.  Soumien  [Fisher  diarizes]  had  often  informed  me  of 
great  uneasiness  and  dissatisfaction  in  Mr.  Franklin's  family 
in  a  manner  no  way  pleasing  to  me,  and  which  in  truth  I  was 
unwilling  to  credit,  but  as  Mrs.  Franklin  and  I  of  late  began  to 
be  friendly  and  sociable  I  discerned  too  great  grounds  for  Mr. 
Soumien's  reflection,  arising  solely  from  the  turbulence  and 
jealousy  and  pride  of  her  disposition.  She  suspecting  Mr. 
Franklin  for  having  too  great  an  esteem  for'his  son  in  prejudice 
of  herself  and  daughter,  a  young  woman  of  about  12  or  13 
years  of  age,  for  whom  it  was  visible  Mr.  Franklin  had  no  less 
esteem  than  for  his  son  young  Mr.  Franklin.  I  have  often 
seen  him  pass  to  and  from  his  father's  apartment  upon  busi- 
ness (for  he  does  not  eat,  drink  or  sleep  in  the  house)  without 
the  least  compliment  between  Mrs.  Franklin  and  him  or  any 
sort  of  notice  taken  of  each  other,  till  one  day  as  I  was  sitting 
with  her  in  the  passage  when  the  young  gentleman  came  by 
she  exclaimed  to  me  (he  not  hearing):  "  Mr.  Fisher,  there 
goes  the  greatest  villain  upon  earth."  This  greatly  confounded 
and  perplexed  me,  but  did  not  hinder  her  from  pursuing  her 
invectives  in  the  foulest  terms  I  ever  heard  from  a  gentle- 
woman. 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  217 

It  is  pleasant,  however,  to  state  that  in  time  Deborah's 
dislike  for  William  Franklin  seems  to  have  considerably 
abated.  In  1767,  her  husband  could  write  to  her,  "I  am 
glad  you  go  sometimes  to  Burlington.  The  Harmony 
you  mention  in  our  Family  and  among  our  Children  gives 
me  great  Pleasure."  And  before  this  letter  was  written, 
William  Franklin  had  availed  himself  of  an  opportunity 
to  testify  his  dutiful  readiness  to  extend  his  protection 
to  her.  It  was  when  she  had  just  taken  possession  of  the 
new  house,  built  by  her  during  her  husband's  absence  in 
England,  and  his  enemies,  availing  themselves  of  the 
brief  unpopularity  incurred  by  him  through  recommending 
his  friend,  John  Hughes,  as  a  stamp  collector,  had  aroused 
the  feeling  against  him  in  Philadelphia  to  the  point  of 
rendering  an  attack  upon  this  house  not  improbable. 
As  soon  as  William  Franklin,  then  Governor  of  New 
Jersey,  heard  of  the  danger,  to  which  his  father's  wife  and 
daughter  were  exposed,  he  hastened  to  Philadelphia  to 
offer  them  a  refuge  under  his  own  roof  at  Burlington. 
Mrs.  Franklin  permitted  her  daughter  to  accept  the  offer, 
but  undauntedly  refused  to  accept  it  herself.  This  is  her 
own  account  of  the  matter  to  her  husband  divested  of  its 
illiteracy. 

I  was  for  nine  days  [she  said]  kept  in  a  continual  hurry  by 
people  to  remove,  and  Sally  was  persuaded  to  go  to  Burlington 
for  safety.  Cousin  Davenport  came  and  told  me  that  more 
than  twenty  people  had  told  him  it  was  his  duty  to  be  with  me. 
I  said  I  was  pleased  to  receive  civility  from  anybody;  so  he 
staid  with  me  some  time;  towards  night  I  said  he  should  fetch 
a  gun  or  two,  as  we  had  none.  I  sent  to  ask  my  brother  to 
come  and  bring  his  gun  also,  so  we  turned  one  room  into  a 
magazine;  I  ordered  some  sort  of  defense  upstairs,  such  as  I 
could  manage  myself.  I  said,  when  I  was  advised  to  remove, 
that  I  was  very  sure  you  had  done  nothing  to  hurt  anybody, 
nor  had  I  given  any  offense  to  any  person  at  all,  nor  would  I 
be  made  uneasy  by  anybody;  nor  would  I  stir  or  show  the 


218       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

least  uneasiness,  but  if  any  one  came  to  disturb  me  I  would 
show  a  proper  resentment.  I  was  told  that  there  were  eight 
hundred  men  ready  to  assist  any  one  that  should  be  molested. 

Indeed,  after  his  marriage,  the  correspondence  of  Wil- 
liam Franklin  indicates  that,  if  the  relations  of  Mrs. 
Franklin  to  him  were  not  altogether  what  Franklin  would 
fain  have  had  them,  that  is  the  relations  of  Hagar  rather 
than  of  Sarah,  he  at  least  bore  himself  towards  her  with  a 
marked  degree  of  respectful  consideration.  His  letters  to 
her  were  subscribed,  "Your  ever  dutiful  son,"  and,  in  a 
letter  to  his  father,  he  informs  him  that  he  and  his  wife 
were  "ona  visit  to  my  mother."  When  Deborah  died,  he 
was  the  "chief  mourner"  in  the  funeral  procession,  and, 
in  a  subsequent  letter  to  his  father,  he  speaks  of  her  as 
"my  poor  old  mother."  After  the  paralytic  stroke, 
which  "greatly  affected  her  memory  and  understanding, " 
William  Franklin  expressed  the  opinion  that  she  should 
have  "some  clever  body  to  take  care  of  her,"  because,  he 
said,  she  "becomes  every  day  more  and  more  unfit  to  be 
left  alone."  No  cleverer  body  for  the  purpose,  of  course, 
could  be  found  than  her  own  daughter,  who  came  with  her 
husband  to  reside  with  and  take  care  of  her.  In  his  letter 
to  Franklin  announcing  her  death,  William  Franklin  used 
these  feeling  words :  "  She  told  me  when  I  took  leave  of  her 
on  my  removal  to  Amboy,  that  she  never  expected  to  see 
you  unless  you  returned  this  winter,  for  that  she  was  sure 
she  should  not  live  till  next  summer.  I  heartily  wish  you 
had  happened  to  have  come  over  in  the  fall,  as  I  think  her 
disappointment  in  that  respect  preyed  a  good  deal  on  her 
spirits."  Poor  Richard's  Almanac  had  sayings,  it  is 
hardly  necessary  to  declare,  suitable  for  such  an  occasion. 
"There  are  three  faithful  friends;  an  old  wife,  an  old  dog, 
and  ready  money."     "A  good  wife  lost  is  God's  gift  lost." 

In  the  light  of  what  we  have  narrated,  it  is  obvious  that 
there  were  occasions  in  Franklin's  nuptial  life  when  it  was 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  219 

well  that  he  was  a  philosopher  as  well  as  a  husband. 
"You  can  bear  with  your  own  Faults,  and  why  not  a  fault 
in  your  Wife?,"  is  a  question  that  he  is  known  to  have 
asked  at  least  once,  and  he  did  not  have  to  leave  his  own 
doorstep  to  find  an  application  for  his  injunction,  "Keep 
your  eyes  wide  open  before  marriage,  half  shut  after- 
wards." But  if  there  was  defect  of  temper  there  was 
never  any  defect  of  devotion  upon  the  part  of  the  jealous, 
high-spirited,  courageous  wife.  It  is  true  that  she  had  no 
place  in  the  wider  sphere  of  her  husband's  existence. 
She  did  not  concern  herself  even  about  such  a  political 
controversy  as  that  over  the  Stamp  Tax  except  to  say  like 
the  leal  wife  she  was  that  she  was  sure  that  her  husband 
had  not  done  anything  to  hurt  anybody. 

You  are  very  prudent  [he  said  to  her  on  one  occasion] 
not  to  engage  in  Party  Disputes.  Women  never  should  meddle 
with  them  except  in  Endeavour  to  reconcile  their  Husbands, 
Brothers,  and  Friends,  who  happen  to  be  of  contrary  Sides. 
If  your  Sex  can  keep  cool,  you  may  be  a  means  of  cooling 
ours  the  sooner,  and  restoring  more  speedily  that  social  Har- 
mony among  Fellow-Citizens,  that  is  so  desirable  after  long 
and  bitter  Dissensions. 

Her  interest  in  her  husband's  electrical  studies  probably 
ceased  when  he  wrote  to  her  as  follows  with  reference  to 
the  two  bells  that  he  had  placed  in  his  house  in  such  a 
position  as  to  ring  when  an  iron  rod  with  which  they  were 
connected  was  electrified  by  a  storm  cloud :  "If  the  ringing 
of  the  Bells  frightens  you,  tie  a  Piece  of  Wire  from  one  Bell 
to  the  other,  and  that  will  conduct  the  lightning  without 
ringing  or  snapping,  but  silently."  She  never  became 
equal  even  to  such  social  standing  as  her  husband  acquired 
for  himself  by  his  talents  and  usefulness  in  Philadelphia; 
and  she  would  have  been  a  serious  clog  upon  him  in  the 
social  circles  to  which  he  was  admitted  in  Great  Britain 
and  on  the  Continent,  if  her  aversion  to  crossing  the  ocean 


220       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

had  not  been  insurmountable.  Her  letters  are  marked 
by  a  degree  of  illiteracy  that  make  the  task  of  reading 
them  almost  like  the  task  of  reading  an  unfamiliar  foreign 
tongue;  but  it  should  be  recollected  that  in  the  eighteenth 
century  in  America  it  was  entirely  possible  for  a  person  to 
be  at  once  illiterate  and  a  lady.  Even  Franklin  with  his 
penchant  for  simplified  spelling  must  have  felt,  after 
meditating  some  of  Deborah's  written  words,  that  the 
orthographical  line  had  to  be  drawn  somewhere.  The 
following  letter  from  her  to  her  husband,  dated  October 
ye  29,  1773,  and  transcribed  exactly  as  written  is  neither 
better  nor  worse  than  the  rest  of  her  epistles  to  her  hus- 
band: 

My  Dear  Child: — I  have  bin  verey  much  distrest  aboute 
you  as  I  did  not  aney  letter  nor  one  word  from  you  nor  did  I 
hear  one  word  from  oney  bodey  that  you  wrote  to  so  I  muste 
submit  and  inde  ( ?)  to  submit  to  what  I  am  to  bair  I  did  write 
by  Capt  Folkner  to  you  but  he  is  gon  down  and  when  I  read 
it  over  I  did  not  lik  t  and  so  if  this  donte  send  it  I  shante  like 
it  as  I  donte  send  you  aney  news  now  I  dont  go  abrode. 

I  shall  tell  you  what  Consernes  my  selef  our  youngest 
Grandson  is  the  foreed  child  us  a  live  he  has  had  the  Small 
Pox  and  had  it  very  fine  and  got  a  brod  a  gen.  Capt  All  will 
tell  you  aboute  him  and  Benj  Franklin  Beache,  but  as  it  is  so 
difncall  to  writ  I  have  deserd  him  to  tell  you,  I  have  sent  a 
squerel  for  your  friend  and  wish  her  better  luck  it  is  a  very 
fine  one  I  have  had  very  bad  luck  they  one  kild  and  another 
run  a  way  all  thow  they  are  bred  up  tame  I  have  not  a  Caige  as 
I  donte  know  where  the  man  lives  that  makes  them  my  love  to 
Salley  Franklin  my  love  to  all  our  Cusins  as  thow  menshond 
remember  me  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Weste  doe  you  ever  hear  any- 
thing of  Ninely  Evans  as  was.1 

xThis  lady,  whose  father  was  Lewis  Evans,  of  Philadelphia,  a  sur- 
veyor and  map-maker,  was  a  god-daughter  of  Deborah,  and,  according 
to  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  Deborah,  dated  July  22,  1774,  fell  little  short 
of  being  ubiquitous.  He  wrote:  "She  is  now  again  at  Tunis,  where  you 
will  see  she  has  lately  lain  in  of  her  third  Child.  Her  Father,  you  know, 
was  a  geographer,  and  his  daughter  has  some  connection,  I  think,  with 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  221 

I  thanke  you  for  the  silke  and  hat  it  at  the  womons  to 
make  it  up  but  have  it  put  up  as  you  wrote  (torn)  I  thonke  it 
it  is  very  prittey ;  what  was  the  prise  ?  I  desier  to  give  my  love 
to  everybodey  (torn)  I  shold  love  Billey  was  in  town  5  or  6  day 
when  the  child  was  in  the  small  pox  Mr  Franklin  (torn)  not 
sene  him  yit  I  am  to  tell  a  verey  pritey  thing  about  Ben  the 
players  is  cume  to  town  and  they  am  to  ackte  on  Munday  he 
wanted  to  see  a  play  he  unkill  Beache  had  given  him  a  doler 
his  mama  asked  him  wuther  he  wold  give  it  for  a  ticket,  or 
buy  his  Brother  a  neckles  he  sed  his  Brother  a  necklas  he  is  a 
charmm  child  as  ever  was  Borne  my  Grand  cheldren  are  the 
Best  in  the  world  Sally  will  write  I  cante  write  aney  mor  I  am 

your  a  feckshone  wife, 

D.  Franklin. 

But,  in  spite  of  the  qualifications  we  have  stated,  there 
was  a  place  after  all,  even  aside  from  the  joint  care  of  the 
shop,  in  which  the  pair  throve  so  swimmingly  together, 
that  Deborah  could  occupy  in  the  thoughts  of  a  man  with 
such  quick,  strong  affections,  such  liberality  of  mind  and 
such  a  keen  interest  in  the  ordinary  concerns  of  life  as  we 
find  in  Franklin.  This  place  becomes  manifest  enough 
when  we  read  the  letters  that  passed  between  the  two. 

A  more  considerate,  loving  wife  than  these  letters 
show  her  to  have  been  it  would  be  hard  to  conceive. 
Napoleon  said  of  his  marshals  that  only  one  of  them 
loved  him,  the  others  loved  the  Emperor.  The  devotion 
of  Deborah  to  her  husband  is  all  the  more  noteworthy 
because  it  appears  to  have  been  but  slightly,  if  at  all, 
influenced  by  his  public  distinction.  Her  attachment  was 
to  Franklin  himself,  the  early  lover  with  whom  she  had 
"interchanged  promises' '  when  but  a  girl,  and  who,  after 
deserting  her  for  a  time,  had  come  back  to  her  in  her 
desolation  like  day  returning  to  the  dark  and  lonely  night, 
the  business  comrade  to  whom  her  industry  and  prudence 

the  whole  Globe;  being  born  herself  in  America,  and  having  her  first 
Child  in  Asia,  her  second  in  Europe,  and  now  her  third  in  Africa." 


222       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

had  proved  in  effect  a  fortune,  the  most  admired  and 
beloved  man  in  the  circle  of  her  social  relationships,  the 
patient,  dutiful,  affectionate  friend  and  husband,  the 
father  of  her  daughter  and  son.  Inarticulate  as  were  her 
struggles  with  syntax  and  orthography,  she  was  to  him 
the  most  faithful  of  correspondents.  Long  after  she  had 
reached  an  age  when  the  fond  diminutives  of  early  married 
life  are  usually  exchanged  for  soberer  language,  she 
addressed  him  in  her  letters  as  "My  Dear  Child,"  and 
sometimes  as  "My  Dearest  Dear  Child.,,  "I  am  set  down 
to  confab  a  little  with  my  dear  child,"  was  the  way  in 
which  she  began  one  of  her  letters,  "Adue  my  dear  child, 
and  take  care  of  your  selef  for  mamey's  sake  as  well  as 
your  one, "  was  the  way  in  which  she  ended  another.  So 
frequently,  too,  did  she  write  to  him  when  they  were 
separated  from  each  other  that  he  repeatedly  acknowl- 
edged in  his  replies  her  extraordinary  constancy  as  a 
correspondent;  on  one  occasion  writing  to  her:  "I  think 
nobody  ever  had  more  faithful  Correspondents  than  I  have 
in  Mr.  Hughes  and  you.  ...  It  is  impossible  for  me  to  get 
or  keep  out  of  your  Debts. ' '  When  they  had  been  married 
over  twenty-seven  years,  he  thanks  her  in  one  of  his  letters 
for  writing  to  him  so  frequently  and  fully,  and,  when 
they  had  been  married  nearly  forty  years,  he  wrote  to  her 
that  he  thought  that  she  was  the  most  punctual  of  all  his 
correspondents.  And  not  only  did  she  write  often 
enough  to  him  to  elicit  these  acknowledgment &,  but  her 
letters  afford  ample  evidence  that  to  lack  a  letter  from 
him  when  she  expected  one  was  nothing  less  than  a  bitter 
disappointment  to  her.  "I  know,"  he  said  in  a  letter  to 
her,  "you  love  to  have  a  Line  from  me  by  every  Packet, 
so  I  write,  tho'  I  have  little  to  say."  We  have  already 
seen  how  her  failure  to  hear  from,  or  of,  him  led  her  on  one 
occasion  to  end  her  plaint  with  words  strong  enough  to 
express  resignation  to  the  very  worst  trial  to  which  human 
life  is  subject.     On  another  occasion  she  wrote:  "Aprill  7 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  223 

this  day  is  Cumpleet  5  munthes  senes  you  lefte  your  one 
House  I  did  reseve  a  letter  from  the  Capes  senes  that  not 
one  line  I  due  supose  that  you  did  write  by  the  packit  but 
that  is  not  arived  yit."  The  same  hunger  for  every- 
thing that  related  to  him,  no  matter  how  trivial,  finds 
utterance  in  her  petition  in  another  letter  that  he  wold 
tell  her  hough  his  poor  armes  was  and  hough  he  was  on  his 
voiag  and  hough  he  air  and  everey  thing  is  with  him  wich 
she  wanted  verey  much  to  know.  Nor  did  her  affection 
limit  itself  to  letters.  Whenever  he  was  absent  from  her 
and  stationary  whether  at  Gnadenhutten,  or  London, 
his  table  was  never  wanting  in  something  to  remind  him  of 
home  and  of  the  attentive  wife  whose  domestic  virtues  in 
spite  of  her  deficiencies  of  education  gave  home  so  much  of 
its  meaning. 

We  have  enjoyed  your  roast  beef  [he  wrote  to  her  from 
Gnadenhutten]  and  this  day  began  on  the  roast  veal.  All 
agree  that  they  are  both  the  best  that  ever  were  of  the  kind. 
Your  citizens,  that  have  their  dinners  hot  and  hot,  know 
nothing  of  good  eating.  We  find  it  in  much  greater  perfection 
when  the  kitchen  is  four  score  miles  from  the  dining  room. 

The  apples  are  extremely  welcome,  and  do  bravely  to  eat 
after  our  salt  pork;  the  minced  pies  are  not  yet  come  to  hand, 
but  I  suppose  we  shall  find  them  among  the  things  expected  up 
from  Bethlehem  on  Tuesday;  the  capillaire  is  excellent,  but 
none  of  us  having  taken  cold  as  yet,  we  have  only  tasted  it. 

Other  letters  of  his  written  from  Gnadenhutten  testify 
that  she  missed  no  opportunity,  so  long  as  he  was  in  the 
wilderness,  to  send  him  something  better  than  the  salt 
pork,  to  which  her  apples  were  such  a  brave  sequel,  to 
relieve  the  harsh  privations  of  camp  life  for  himself  and 
his  brother  officers.  He  tells  her  in  one  of  his  letters 
that  all  the  gentlemen  send  their  compliments.  "They 
drink  your  health  at  every  meal,  having  always  something 
on  the  table  to  put  them  in  mind  of  you."    Even  when  the 


224       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Atlantic  was  between  them,  his  life  was  kept  continually 
refreshed  by  the  same  bountiful  stream  of  supplies.  A 
menu,  made  up  of  the  items  that  she  sent  him,  might  well 
have  softened  the  heart  of  even  such  a  rank,  swash- 
buckling enemy  of  the  American  Colonies  as  Dr.  Johnson, 
who  loved  a  good  dinner  even  more  than  he  hated  the 
Americans.  Dried  venison,  bacon,  smoked  beef,  apples, 
cranberries,  nuts,  Indian  and  buckwheat  meal,  and 
peaches,  dried  with  and  without  their  skins,  are  all  men- 
tioned in  his  acknowledgments  of  her  favors.  Some  of 
the  nuts  and  apples  he  presented  on  one  occasion  to  Lord 
and  Lady  Bathurst  "a  very  great  lady,  the  best  woman  in 
England, "  accompanied  by  a  brief  note  which  borrowed 
the  point  of  its  graceful  pleasantry  from  the  effort  of  Great 
Britain  to  tax  the  Colonies  without  their  consent : 

"Dr.  Franklin  presents  his  respectful  compliments  to 
Lord  Bathurst,  with  some  American  nuts;  and  to  Lady 
Bathurst,  with  some  American  apples;  which  he  prays 
they  will  accept  as  a  tribute  from  that  country,  small 
indeed,  but  voluntary." 

Franklin's  first  absence  from  his  wife  in  England  lasted 
some  five  years,  his  second  some  ten;  and  such  was 
Deborah's  passionate  attachment  to  him  that  it  can 
scarcely  be  doubted  that,  if  he  had  not,  during  these 
periods  of  absence,  cheated  himself  and  her  from  year 
to  year  with  the  idea  that  his  business  would  soon  permit 
him  to  return  to  Philadelphia,  she  would  have  joined  him 
despite  her  aversion  to  the  sea.  This  aversion  was  natural 
enough  under  the  maritime  conditions  of  that  time;  for 
even  Franklin,  whose  numerous  transatlantic  voyages 
were  usually  attended  by  fair  weather,  and  who  was  an 
uncommonly  resourceful  sailor,  left  behind  him  the  state- 
ment that  he  never  crossed  the  ocean  without  vowing 
that  he  would  do  so  no  more.  *     As  it  was,  the  frequently 

x  A  readable  essay  might  be  written  upon  the  sea-voyages  of  Franklin. 
The  sloop,  in  which  he  absconded  from  Boston,  in  1723,  was  favored  with 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  225 

recurring  expectation  upon  her  part  that  a  few  months 
more  would  restore  her  husband  to  his  home  checked  any- 
thought  that  she  may  have  had  of  making  a  voyage  to 
England.  There  is  no  evidence  that  she  ever  harbored 
any  such  intention.  An  interesting  feature  of  Franklin's 
life  in  England  in  his  maturer  years  is  the  effort  of  his 
friend  Strahan  to  induce  Mrs.  Franklin  to  come  over  to 
that  country  with  Sally  and  to  take  up  her  permanent 
residence  there  with  her  husband.  As  to  Sally,  it  began  with 
the  half  jocular,  half  serious,  proposal  from   Franklin  to 


a  fair  wind,  and  reached  New  York  in  three  days.  His  voyage  from  Phila- 
delphia to  Boston  in  1724  lasted  for  about  a  fortnight.  The  "little 
vessel,"  in  which  he  sailed,  he  tells  us  in  the  Autobiography,  "struck  on  a 
shoal  in  going  down  the  bay,  and  sprung  a  leak."  "We  had,"  Franklin 
says,  "a  blustering  time  at  sea,  and  were  oblig'd  to  pump  almost  continu- 
ally, at  which  I  took  my  turn."  The  cabin  accommodations  and  abundant 
sea  stores  that  fell  to  the  lot  of  Ralph  and  himself,  under  circumstances 
already  mentioned  by  us,  on  their  voyage  from  Philadelphia  to  England 
in  1724,  in  the  London-Hope,  Captain  Annis,  were  rare  windfalls;  but 
the  voyage  was  marked  by  a  great  deal  of  bad  weather.  The  return 
voyage  of  Franklin  from  London  to  Philadelphia  in  1726,  in  the  Berkshire, 
Captain  Clark,  including  obiter  delays  on  the  south  coast  of  England,  con- 
sumed the  whole  interval  between  July  21  and  Oct.  12.  All  the  incidents 
of  this  long  voyage  were  entered  in  the  Journal  kept  by  him  while  it  was 
under  way,  and  there  are  few  writings  in  which  the  ordinary  features  of 
an  ocean  passage  at  that  time  are  so  clearly  brought  before  the  reader: 
the  baffling  winds,  the  paralyzing  calms ;  the  meagre  fare ;  the  deadly  ennui; 
and  the  moody  sullenness  bred  by  confinement  and  monotony.  The  word 
"helm-a-lee,"  Franklin  states,  became  as  disagreeable  to  their  ears  as  the 
sentence  of  a  judge  to  a  convicted  malefactor.  Once  he  leapt  overboard 
and  swam  around  the  ship  to  "wash"  himself,  and  another  time  he  was 
deterred  from  "washing"  himself  by  the  appearance  of  a  shark,  "that 
mortal  enemy  to  swimmers."  For  a  space  his  ship  was  in  close  enough 
companionship  for  several  days  with  another  ship  for  the  masters  of  the 
two  vessels,  accompanied  by  a  passenger  in  each  instance,  to  exchange 
visits.  On  his  second  voyage,  of  about  thirty  days,  to  England,  in  1757, 
the  packet,  in  which  he  was  a  passenger,  easily  outstripped  the  hostile 
cruisers  by  which  she  was  several  times  chased,  but  wore  about  with  strain- 
ing masts  just  in  time  to  escape  shipwreck  on  the  Scilly  rocks.  Of  his 
return  to  America  in  1762,  he  wrote  to  Strahan  from  Philadelphia:  "We 
had  a  long  Passage  near  ten  Weeks  from  Portsmouth  to  this  Place,  but  it 
was  a  pleasant  one;  for  we  had  ten  sail  in  Company  and  a  Man  of  War  to 
vol.  1— is 


226       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Strahan,  before  the  former  left  Pennsylvania  for  London  in 
1757,  that  Sally,  then  but  a  mere  child,  and  Strahan's 
son  should  make  a  match  of  it.  "Please  to  acquaint 
him,"  Franklin  asked  of  Strahan  on  one  occasion,  after 
saying  that  he  was  glad  to  hear  so  good  a  character  of  his 
son-in-law,  "that  his  spouse  grows  finely  and  will  probably 
have  an  agreeable  person.  That  with  the  best  natural 
disposition  in  the  world,  she  discovers  daily  the  seeds  and 
tokens  of  industry,  economy,  and,  in  short,  of  every 
female  virtue,  which  her  parents  will  endeavour  to  culti- 
vate for  him."  Some  years  later  he  added  that  Sally  was 
indeed  a  very  good  girl,  affectionate,  dutiful  and  in- 
dustrious, had  one  of  the  best  hearts,  and  though  not  a  wit, 
was,  for  one  of  her  years,  by  no  means  deficient  in  under- 
standing. Many  years  later,  after  time  and  the  cares  of 
motherhood  had  told  on  her,  a  keen  observer,  Manasseh 
Cutler,  is  so  ungallant  as  to  speak  of  this  daughter  as ' '  a  very- 
gross  and  rather  homely  lady,"  but  there  is  evidence  that, 
even  if  she  was  never  the  superbly  handsome  woman  that 


protect  us;  we  had  pleasant  Weather  and  fair  Winds,  and  frequently 
visited  and  dined  from  ship  to  ship."  At  the  end  of  his  third  voyage  to 
England  in  1764,  Franklin  wrote  to  Deborah  from  the  Isle  of  Wight  that 
no  father  could  have  been  tenderer  to  a  child  than  Captain  Robinson  had 
been  to  him.  "But  we  have  had  terrible  Weather,  and  I  have  often  been 
thankful  that  our  dear  Sally  was  not  with  me.  Tell  our  Friends  that  din'd 
with  us  on  the  Turtle  that  the  kind  Prayer  they  then  put  up  for  thirty 
Days  fair  Wind  for  me  was  favourably  heard  and  answered,  we  being 
just  30  Days  from  Land  to  Land."  Of  his  return  voyage  to  America  in 
1775,  he  wrote  to  Priestley:  "I  had  a  passage  of  six  weeks,  the  weather 
constantly  so  moderate  that  a  London  wherry  might  have  accompanied 
us  all  the  way."  His  thirty-day  voyage  to  France  in  1776  proved  a 
rough  and  debilitating  one  to  him  at  his  advanced  age,  but  Captain  Wickes 
was  not  only  able  to  keep  his  illustrious  passenger  out  of  the  Tower,  but 
to  snatch  up  two  English  prizes  on  his  way  over.  We  need  say  no  more 
than  we  have  already  incidentally  said  in  our  text  of  the  seven  weeks  that 
Franklin  gave  up  to  his  pen  and  thermometer  on  his  return  voyage  to 
America  in  1785.  After  the  passage,  he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Hewson  that  it 
had  been  a  pleasant  and  not  a  long  one  in  which  there  was  but  one  day, 
a  day  of  violent  storm,  on  which  he  was  glad  that  she  was  not  with  them. 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  227 

James  Parton  says  she  was,  yet  in  the  soft  bloom  of  her  young 
womanhood  the  prediction  of  her  father  that  she  would 
have  an  agreeable  person  was  unquestionably  fulfilled. 

When  Franklin  passed  over  to  England  as  the  agent  of 
the  people  of  Pennsylvania,  Strahan  became  so  fond  of 
him  that  an  earnest  effort  to  fix  the  whole  family  in  Eng- 
land as  a  permanent  place  of  residence  followed  almost  as 
a  matter  of  course,  and  he  not  only  formally  opened  up  his 
feelings  on  the  subject  to  Franklin  but  indited  a  letter  to 
Mrs.  Franklin  which  he  appears  to  have  believed  would 
prove  an  irresistible  masterpiece  of  persuasive  eloquence. 
This  letter  is  one  of  the  topics  upon  which  Franklin  re- 
peatedly touches  in  his  correspondence  with  Deborah. 
In  a  letter  to  her  of  January  14,  1758,  he  tells  her  that 
their  friend  Strahan  had  offered  to  lay  him  a  considerable 
wager  that  a  letter  that  Strahan  had  written  would  bring 
her  immediately  over  to  England,  but  that  he  had  told 
Strahan  that  he  would  not  pick  his  pocket,  for  he  was  sure 
that  there  was  no  inducement  strong  enough  to  prevail 
with  her  to  cross  the  seas.  Later  he  wrote  to  her,  "Your 
Answer  to  Mr.  Strahan  was  just  what  it  should  be.  I  was 
much  pleas'd  with  it.  He  fancy'd  his  Rhetoric  and  Art 
would  certainly  bring  you  over.,,  Finding  that  he  was 
unable  himself  to  persuade  Mrs.  Franklin  to  settle  down 
in  England,  Strahan  urged  Franklin  to  try  his  hand,  and 
the  letter  in  which  Franklin  reports  this  fact  to  his  wife 
makes  it  apparent  enough  that  Strahan  had  the  matter 
deeply  at  heart. 

He  was  very  urgent  with  me  [says  Franklin]  to  stay  in 
England  and  prevail  with  you  to  remove  hither  with  Sally. 
He  propos'd  several  advantageous  Schemes  to  me,  which 
appear 'd  reasonably  founded.  His  Family  is  a  very  agreeable 
one;  Mrs.  Strahan  a  sensible  and  good  Woman,  the  Children 
of  amiable  Characters,  and  particularly  the  young  Man 
(who  is)  sober,  ingenious  and  industrious,  and  a  (desirable) 


228       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Person.  In  Point  of  Circumstances  there  can  be  no  Objec- 
tion ;  Mr.  Strahan  being  (now)  living  in  a  Way  as  to  lay  up  a 
Thousand  Pounds  every  Year  from  the  Profits  of  his  Business, 
after  maintaining  his  Family  and  paying  all  Charges.  I  gave 
him,  however,  two  Reasons  why  I  could  not  think  of  removing 
hither,  One,  my  Affection  to  Pennsilvania  and  long  established 
Friendships  and  other  connections  there:  The  other,  your 
invincible  Aversion  to  crossing  the  Seas.  And  without  re- 
moving hither,  I  could  not  think  of  parting  with  my  Daughter 
to  such  a  Distance.  I  thank'd  him  for  the  Regard  shown  us 
in  the  Proposal,  but  gave  him  no  Expectation  that  I  should 
forward  the  Letters.  So  you  are  at  liberty  to  answer  or  not, 
as  you  think  proper.  Let  me  however  know  your  Sentiments. 
You  need  not  deliver  the  Letter  to  Sally,  if  you  do  not  think 
it  proper. 

She  did  answer,  but  we  are  left  to  infer  from  a  subsequent 
letter  from  Franklin  to  her,  in  which  he  alludes  to  this 
letter  of  hers,  that,  if  Strahan  was  disappointed  by  his 
failure  to  bring  about  the  migration  of  the  Franklins,  his 
disappointment  was  largely  swallowed  up  in  the  shock 
experienced  by  his  literary  vanity  in  finding  that  his 
elaborate  appeal  had  not  drawn  her  over.  We  cannot 
share  his  disappointment,  whatever  it  was,  when  we 
recollect  that  to  Sally's  marriage  to  Richard  Bache  we 
are  indebted  for  more  than  one  descendant  of  Franklin 
whose  talents  and  public  services  have  won  an  honorable 
place  in  the  history  of  the  nation. 

It  is  gratifying  to  state  that  no  one  can  read  either 
Franklin's  letters  to  Deborah  or  to  other  persons  without 
feeling  unqualifiedly  assured  that  he  entertained  a  sincere 
and  profound  affection  for  the  good  wife  whose  heart  was 
for  nearly  fifty  years  fastened  upon  him  and  his  every 
want  with  such  solicitous  tenderness.  His  married  life 
was  distinguished  to  such  an  eminent  degree  by  the  calm, 
pure  flow  of  domestic  happiness  that  for  that  reason,  if 
for  no  other,  we  find  it  impossible  to  reconcile  ourselves 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  229 

to  the  protean  facility  with  which,  in  his  old  age,  he 
yielded  to  the  seductions  of  French  love-making.  The 
interval,  to  say  the  least,  is  long  between  the  honest  apples, 
which  his  own  good  American  wife  sent  him  from  time 
to  time,  when  he  was  in  London,  and  the  meretricious 
apples  which  Madame  Brillon  thought  that  "King  John" 
i.  e.  M.  Brillon  might  be  decent  enough  to  offer  to  some 
extent  to  his  neighbors  when  they  were  all  together  in 
Paradise  where  we  shall  want  for  nothing.  If  one  wishes 
fully  to  realize  how  little  fettered  was  the  mind  of  Franklin 
by  local  ideals  and  conventions  and  how  quick  it  was, 
like  the  changeful  face  of  the  sea,  to  mirror  all  its  external 
relations,  one  has  but  to  read  first  Franklin's  letters  to  his 
wife,  as  thoroughly  Anglo-Saxon  as  any  ever  penned  in  an 
English  manse,  and  then  his  letters  to  Madame  Brillon, 
and  the  exquisite  bagatelle,  as  thoroughly  French  as  the 
Abbe  Morellet's  "Humble  Petition  presented  to  Madam 
Helvetius  by  her  Cats, "  in  which  he  told  Madame  Helve- 
tius  of  the  new  connection  formed  by  Deborah  with  M. 
Helvetius  in  the  Elysian  Fields.  '  There  is  every  reason  to 
believe  that  Franklin's  marriage  vow  was  never  dishonored 
during  Deborah's  life,  lax  as  his  conduct  was  before  his 
marriage  and  lax  as  his  diction  at  least  was  after  her 
death.  In  the  Diary  from  which  we  have  already  quoted 
quite  liberally,  Fisher,  after  narrating  the  extraordinary 
manner  in  which  Deborah  bewailed  the  troubles  of  her 
"Pappy,"  observes,  "Mr.  Franklin's  moral  character  is 
good,  and  he  and  Mrs.  Franklin  live  irreproachably  as 
man  and  wife."  Franklin's  loyalty  to  his  wife  is  also 
evidenced  by  a  letter  from  Strahan  to  Deborah  in  which 
he  uses  these  words: 

For  my  own  part,  I  never  saw  a  man  who  was,  in  every 
respect,  so  perfectly  agreeable  to  me.  Some  are  amiable  in 
one  view,  some  in  another,  he  in  all.  Now  Madam,  as  I  know 
the  ladies  here  consider  him  in  exactly  the  same  light  I  do, 


230       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

upon  my  word  I  think  you  should  come  over,  with  all  con- 
venient speed,  to  look  after  your  interest;  not  but  that  I 
think  him  as  faithful  to  his  Joan  as  any  man  breathing;  but 
who  knows  what  repeated  and  strong  temptation  may  in  time, 
and  while  he  is  at  so  great  a  distance  from  you,  accomplish  ? 

This  interrogatory  was,  perhaps,  the  rhetorical  stroke 
upon  which  Strahan  relied  to  give  the  coup  de  grdce  to 
Mrs.  Franklin's  abhorrence  of  the  sea.  It  was  certainly 
calculated  to  set  a  jealous-minded  wife  to  thinking.  But 
it  seems  to  have  had  as  little  effect  upon  Deborah  as  the 
other  artifices  of  this  masterly  letter.  The  terms  "his 
Joan"  in  it  were  doubtless  suggested  by  Franklin's  song, 
My  Plain  Country  Joan,  one  verse  of  which,  as  good,  or 
rather  as  bad,  as  the  rest,  was  as  follows: 

"Some  faults  we  have  all,  and  so  has  my  Joan, 
But  then  they're  exceedingly  small; 
And,  now  I  am  used,  they  are  like  my  own, 
I  scarcely  can  see  'em  at  all, 
My  dear  friends, 
I  scarcely  can  see  'em  at  all." 

Another  indication  of  the  marital  fidelity  of  which  Stra- 
han speaks  is  found  in  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  Deborah 
after  his  second  return  from  England  in  which  he  said: 
"I  approve  of  your  opening  all  my  English  Letters,  as  it 
must  give  you  Pleasure  to  see  that  People  who  knew  me 
there  so  long  and  so  intimately,  retain  so  sincere  a  Regard 
for  me."  But  it  would  be  grossly  unjust  to  Franklin  to 
measure  the  degree  of  his  attachment  to  his  Joan  by  the 
fact  merely  that  he  preserved  inviolate  the  nuptial  pledge 
which  a  man  of  honor  can  fairly  be  expected  as  a  matter 
of  course  to  observe  scrupulously.  Not  only  the  lines 
just  quoted  by  us  but  the  general  character  of  his  married 
life  demonstrates  that  the  only  thing  that  he  ever  regretted 
about  his  intercourse  with  Deborah  was  that  his  own 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  231 

censurable  conduct  should  have  made  her  for  a  time  the 
wife  of  anyone  but  himself. 

In  his  correspondence  with  his  friend  Catherine  Ray, 
there  are  two  pleasing  references  to  Deborah. 

Mrs.  Franklin  [one  reads]  was  very  proud,  that  a  young 
lady  should  have  so  much  regard  for  her  old  husband,  as  to 
send  him  such  a  present  (a  cheese).  We  talk  of  you  every 
time  it  comes  to  table.  She  is  sure  you  are  a  sensible  girl, 
and  a  notable  housewife,  and  talks  of  bequeathing  me  to  you 
as  a  legacy;  but  I  ought  to  wish  you  a  better,  and  hope  she 
will  live  these  hundred  years;  for  we  are  grown  old  together, 
and  if  she  has  any  faults,  I  am  so  used  to  'em  that  I  don't 
perceive  'em;  as  the  song  says  [and  then,  after  quoting  from 
his  Plain  Country  Joan  the  stanza  which  we  have  quoted,  he 
adds :].  Indeed,  I  begin  to  think  she  has  none,  as  I  think  of  you. 
And  since  she  is  willing  I  should  love  you,  as  much  as  you  are 
willing  to  be  loved  by  me,  let  us  join  in  wishing  the  old  lady 
a  long  life  and  a  happy. 

The  other  reference  to  Deborah  occurs  in  a  letter  to  Miss 
Ray,  written  after  Franklin's  return  from  a  recent  visit  to 
New  England,  in  which  he  describes  his  feelings  before 
reaching  Philadelphia.  "As  I  drew  nearer,"  he  said,  "I 
found  the  attraction  stronger  and  stronger.  My  diligence 
and  speed  increased  with  my  impatience.  I  drove  on 
violently,  and  made  such  long  stretches,  that  a  very 
few  days  brought  me  to  my  own  house,  and  to  the  arms 
of  my  good  old  wife  and  children." 

It  is  to  Franklin's  own  letters  to  his  wife,  however,  that 
we  must  resort  to  appreciate  how  fully  he  reciprocated 
her  affection.  Illiterate  as  her  letters  were,  they  were  so 
full  of  interest  to  him  that  he  seems  to  have  re-read  as  well 
as  read  them.  In  one  letter  to  her,  for  example,  after  his 
arrival  in  England  in  1757,  he  tells  her,  "I  have  now  gone 
through  all  your  agreeable  letters,  which  give  me  fresh 
pleasure  every  time  I  read  them."     And  that  he  was 


232       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

quick  to  feel  the  dearth  of  such  letters  we  have  testimony 
in  the  form  of  a  playful  postscript  to  one  of  his  letters 
to  her  of  the  preceding  year  when  he  was  at  Easton, 
Pennsylvania.  The  special  messenger,  he  said,  that  had 
been  dispatched  to  Philadelphia  with  a  letter  from  him  to 
her,  as  well  as  letters  from  other  persons  to  their  wives 
and  sweethearts,  had  returned  "  without  a  scrap  for  poor 


The  messenger  says  [he  continues]  he  left  the  letters  at  your 
house,  and  saw  you  afterwards  at  Mr.  Duchess,  and  told  you 
when  he  would  go,  and  that  he  lodged  at  Honey's,  next  door 
to  you,  and  yet  you  did  not  write;  so  let  Goody  Smith  (a 
favorite  servant  of  theirs)  give  one  more  just  judgment,  and 
say  what  should  be  done  to  you.  I  think  I  won't  tell  you 
that  we  are  well,  nor  that  we  expect  to  return  about  the 
middle  of  the  week,  nor  will  I  send  you  a  word  of  news;  that's 
poz. 

The  letter  ends,  "I  am  your  loving  husband";  and  then 
comes  the  postscript:  "I  have  scratched  out  the  loving 
words,  being  writ  in  haste  by  mistake,  when  I  forgot  I 
was  angry." 

His  letters  to  her  bear  all  the  tokens  of  conjugal  love  and 
of  a  deep,  tranquil  domestic  spirit.  At  times,  he  addresses 
her  as  "My  Dear  Debby, "  and  once  as  "My  Dear  Love,  " 
but  habitually  as  "My  Dear  Child.' '  This  was  the  form 
of  address  in  the  first  of  his  published  letters  to  her  dated 
December  27,  1755,  and  in  his  last,  dated  July  22, 1774. 
"I>am,  dear  girl,  your  loving  husband,"  "I  am,  my  dear 
Debby,  your  ever  loving  husband, "  are  among  the  forms 
of  expression  with  which  he  concludes.  The  topics  of  his 
letters  are  almost  wholly  personal  or  domestic.  They 
illustrate  very  strikingly  how  little  dependent  upon 
intellectual  congeniality  married  happiness  is,  provided 
that  there  is  a  mutual  sense  of  duty,  mutual  respect  and 
a  real  community  of  domestic  interests. 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  233 

In  one  of  his  London  letters,  he  informs  her  that  another 
French  translation  of  his  book  had  just  been  published, 
with  a  print  of  himself  prefixed,  which,  though  a  copy  of 
that  by  Chamberlin,  had  so  French  a  countenance  that 
she  would  take  him  for  one  of  that  lively  nation.  "I 
think  you  do  not  mind  such  things,"  he  added,  "or  I 
would  send  you  one."1  To  politics  he  rarely  refers 
except  to  reassure  her  when  uneasiness  had  been  created  in 
her  mind  by  one  of  the  reckless  partisan  accusations  which 
husbands  in  public  life  soon  learn  to  rate  at  their  real 
value  but  their  wives  never  do.  "I  am  concern'd  that  so 
much  Trouble  should  be  given  you  by  idle  Reports  con- 
cerning me,"  he  says  on  one  occasion.  "Be  satisfied, 
my  dear,  that  while  I  have  my  Senses,  and  God  vouchsafes 
me  this  Protection,  I  shall  do  nothing  unworthy  the  Char- 
acter of  an  honest  Man,  and  one  that  loves  his  Family." 

As  a  rule  his  letters  to  Deborah  have  little  to  say  about 
the  larger  world  in  which  he  moved  when  he  was  in  Eng- 
land. If  he  refers  to  the  Royal  Family,  it  is  only  to  men- 
tion that  the  Queen  had  just  been  delivered  of  another 
Prince,  the  eighth  child,  and  that  there  were  now  six 
princes  and  two  princesses,  all  lovely  children.  After  the 
repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act  lifted  the  embargo  laid  by  patriotic 
Americans  on  importations  of  clothing  from  England,  he 
wrote  to  Deborah  that  he  was  willing  that  she  should  have 
a  new  gown,  and  that  he  had  sent  her  fourteen  yards  of 
Pompadour  satin.  He  had  told  Parliament,  he  stated, 
that,  before  the  old  clothes  of  the  Americans  were  worn  out, 
they  might  have  new  ones  of  their  own  making.  "And, 
indeed, "  he  added,  "if  they  had  all  as  many  old  Cloathes 
as  your  old  Man  has,  that  would  not  be  very  unlikely, 

1  A  copious  note  on  the  leading  portraits  of  Franklin  will  be  found  in 
the  Narrative  and  Critical  History  of  America,  edited  by  Justin  Winsor, 
vol.  vii.,  p.  37.  The  best  of  them  resemble  each  other  closely  enough  to 
make  us  feel  satisfied  that  we  should  recognize  hjrp  at  once,  were  it  possible 
for  us  to  meet  him  in  life  on  the  street. 


234       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

for  I  think  you  and  George  reckon'd  when  I  was  last  at 
home  at  least  20  pair  of  old  Breeches."  To  his  own 
fame  and  the  social  attentions  which  he  received  from 
distinguished  men  abroad  he  makes  only  the  most  meagre 
allusion. 

The  agreeable  conversation  I  meet  with  among  men  of 
learning,  and  the  notice  taken  of  me  by  persons  of  distinc- 
tion, are  the  principal  things  that  soothe  me  for  the  present, 
under  this  painful  absence  from  my  family  and  friends.  Yet 
those  would  not  keep  me  here  another  week,  if  I  had  not  other 
inducements;  duty  to  my  country,  and  hopes  of  being  able  to 
do  it  service. 

Thus  he  wrote  to  his  wife  about  four  months  after  he 
arrived  in  England  in  1757.     A  few  weeks  later,  he  said : 

I  begin  to  think  I  shall  hardly  be  able  to  return  before 
this  time  twelve  months.  I  am  for  doing  effectually  what  I 
came  about;  and  I  find  it  requires  both  time  and  patience. 
You  may  think,  perhaps,  that  I  can  find  many  amusements 
here  to  pass  the  time  agreeable.  'Tis  true,  the  regard  and 
friendship  I  meet  with  from  persons  of  worth,  and  the  con- 
versation of  ingenious  men,  give  me  no  small  pleasure;  but  at 
this  time  of  life,  domestic  comforts  afford  the  most  solid 
satisfaction,  and  my  uneasiness  at  being  absent  from  my 
family,  and  longing  desire  to  be  with  them,  make  me  often 
sigh  in  the  midst  of  cheerful  company. T 

The  real  interest  of  Franklin's  correspondence  with  his 
wife  consists  in  the  insight  that  it  gives  us  into  his  private, 
as  contrasted  with  his  public,  relations.     His  genius,  high 

1  Franklin  was  frequently  the  recipient  of  one  of  the  most  delightful  of 
all  forms  of  social  attention,  an  invitation  to  a  country  house  in  the  Brit- 
ish Islands.  On  Oct.  5,  1768,  he  writes  to  Deborah  that  he  has  lately 
been  in  the  country  to  spend  a  few  days  at  friends'  houses,  and  to  breathe 
a  little  fresh  air.  On  Jan.  28,  1772,  after  spending  some  seven  weeks  in 
Ireland  and  some  four  weeks  in  Scotland,  he  tells  the  same  correspondent 
that  he  has  received  abundance  of  civilities  from  the  gentry  of  both  these 
kingdoms. 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  235 

as  it  rose  into  the  upper  air  of  human  endeavor,  rested 
upon  a  solid  sub-structure  of  ordinary  stone  and  cement, 
firmly  planted  in  the  earth,  and  this  is  manifest  in  his 
family  history  as  in  everything  else.  The  topics,  with 
which  he  deals  in  his  letters  to  Deborah,  are  the  usual 
topics  with  which  a  kind,  sensible,  practical  husband  and 
householder,  without  any  elevated  aspirations  of  any 
kind,  deals  in  his  letters  to  his  wife.  There  was  no  lack  of 
common  ground  on  which  she  and  he  could  meet  in 
correspondence  after  the  last  fond  words  addressed  by 
him  to  her  just  before  he  left  New  York  for  England  in 
1757  had  been  spoken,  "God  preserve,  guard  and  guide 
you."  First  of  all,  there  was  his  daughter  Sally  to  whom 
he  was  lovingly  attached.  In  a  letter  to  his  wife,  shortly 
before  he  used  the  valedictory  words  just  quoted,  he  said : 
"I  leave  Home,  and  undertake  this  long  Voyage  more 
chearfully,  as  I  can  rely  on  your  Prudence  in  the  Manage- 
ment of  my  Affairs,  and  Education  of  my  dear  Child; 
and  yet  I  cannot  forbear  once  more  recommending  her 
to  you  with  a  Father's  tenderest  Concern. "  From  this 
time  on,  during  his  two  absences  in  England,  Sally  seems 
to  have  ever  been  in  his  thoughts.  There  are  several 
references  to  her  in  one  of  his  earliest  letters  to  Deborah 
after  he  reached  England  in  1757. 

I  should  have  read  Sally's  French  letter  with  more  pleasure 
[he  said],  but  that  I  thought  the  French  rather  too  good  to  be 
all  her  own  composing.  ...  I  send  her  a  French  Pamela. 
I  hear  [he  further  said]  there  has  a  miniature  painter  gone 
over  to  Philadelphia,  a  relation  to  John  Reynolds.  If  Sally's 
picture  is  not  done  to  your  mind  by  the  young  man,  and 
the  other  gentleman  is  a  good  hand  and  follows  the  business, 
suppose  you  get  Sally's  done  by  him,  and  send  it  to  me  with 
your  small  picture,  that  I  may  here  get  all  our  little  family 
drawn  in  one  conversation  piece. 

This  idea  was  not  carried  out  because,  among  other 
reasons,  as  he  subsequently  informed  Deborah,  he  found 


236      Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

that  family  pieces  were  no  longer  in  fashion.1     In  this 
same  letter  there  is  a  gentle  caress  for  Sally. 

Had  I  been  well  [he  said],  I  intended  to  have  gone  round 
among  the  shops  and  bought  some  pretty  things  for  you 
and  my  dear  good  Sally  (whose  little  hands  you  say  eased 
your  headache)  to  send  by  this  ship,  but  I  must  now  defer 
it  to  the  next,  having  only  got  a  crimson  satin  cloak  for  you, 
the  newest  fashion,  and  the  black  silk  for  Sally;  but  Billy 
(William  Franklin)  sends  her  a  scarlet  feather,  muff,  and 
tippet,  and  a  box  of  fashionable  linen  for  her  dress. 

In  other  letters  there  are  repeated  indications  of  the 
doting  persistency  with  which  his  mind  dwelt  upon  his 
daughter.  But  the  softest  touch  of  all  is  at  the  end  of 
one  of  them.  After  speaking  of  the  kindness,  with  which 
Mrs.  Stevenson,  Polly  Stevenson's  mother,  had  looked 
after  his  physical  welfare,  he  adds:  "But  yet  I  have  a 
thousand  times  wish'd  you  with  me,  and  my  little  Sally 
with  her  ready  Hands  and  Feet  to  do,  and  go,  and  come, 
and  get  what  I  wanted."  All  these  allusions  to  Sally 
are  found  in  his  letters  to  Deborah  during  his  first  mission 
to  England.  But  little  Sally  was  growing  apace,  and, 
when  he  returned  to  England  on  his  second  mission  in 
1764,  there  was  soon  to  be  another  person  with  an  equal,  if 
not  a  superior,  claim  upon  her  helpful  offices.  We  have 
already  quoted  from  his  letter  to  Deborah  warning  her 
against  "an  expensive  feasting  wedding."  In  this  letter 
he  says  of  Sally's  fianc6,  Richard  Bache: 

I  know  very  little  of  the  Gentleman  or  his  Character,  nor 
can  I  at  this  Distance.  I  hope  his  Expectations  are  not  great 
of  any  Fortune  to  be  had  with  our  Daughter  before  our 
Death.     I  can  only  say,  that  if  he  proves  a  good  Husband  to 

1  Speaking  of  a  portrait  of  Sally  in  a  letter  to  Deborah  from  London  in 
1758,  Franklin  says:  "I  fancy  I  see  more  Likeness  in  her  Picture  than  I 
did  at  first,  and  I  look  at  it  often  with  Pleasure,  as  at  least  it  reminds  me 
of  her." 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  237 

her,  and  a  good  Son  to  me,  he  shall  find  me  as  good  a  Father 
as  I  can  be: — but  at  present  I  suppose  you  would  agree  with 
me,  that  we  cannot  do  more  than  fit  her  out  handsomely  in 
Cloaths  and  Furniture,  not  exceeding  in  the  whole  Five 
Hundred  Pounds,  of  Value.  For  the  rest,  they  must  depend 
as  you  and  I  did,  on  their  own  Industry  and  Care:  as  what 
remains  in  our  Hands  will  be  barely  sufficient  for  our  Support, 
and  not  enough  for  them  when  it  comes  to  be  divided  at  our 
Decease. 

Hardly,  however,  had  the  betrothal  occurred  before  it 
was  clouded  by  business  reverses  which  had  overtaken  the 
prospective  son-in-law.  These  led  to  a  suggestion  from 
the  father  that  may  or  may  not  have  been  prompted  by 
the  thought  that  a  temporary  separation  might  bring 
about  the  termination  of  an  engagement  marked  by 
gloomy  auspices. 

In  your  last  letters  [he  wrote  to  Deborah],  you  say  nothing 
concerning  Mr.  Bache.  The  Misfortune  that  has  lately 
happened  to  his  Affairs,  tho'  it  may  not  lessen  his  Character 
as  an  honest  or  a  Prudent  man,  will  probably  induce  him  to 
forbear  entering  hastily  into  a  State  that  must  require  a  great 
Addition  to  his  Expence,  when  he  will  be  less  able  to  supply  it. 
If  you  think  that  in  the  meantime  it  will  be  some  Amusement 
to  Sally  to  visit  her  Friends  here  (in  London)  and  return  with 
me,  I  should  have  no  Objection  to  her  coming  over  with  Capt. 
Falkener,  provided  Mrs.  Falkener  comes  at  the  same  time  as  is 
talk'd  of.     I  think  too  it  might  be  some  Improvement  to  her. 

Poor  Richard  had  incurred  considerable  risks  when  he 
selected  his  own  mate,  and,  all  things  considered,  he 
acquiesced  gracefully  enough  in  the  betrothal  of  his 
daughter  to  a  man  of  whom  he  knew  practically  nothing 
except  circumstances  that  were  calculated  to  bring  to  his 
memory  many  pat  proverbs  about  the  folly  of  imprudent 
marriages.  If,  therefore,  his  idea  was  to  enlist  the  chilling 
aid  of  absence  in  an  effort  to  bring  the  engagement  to  an 


238       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

end,  fault  can  scarcely  be  found  with  him.  We  know 
from  one  of  William  Franklin's  letters  that  the  friends 
of  the  family  had  such  misgivings  about  the  union  as  to 
excite  the  anger  of  Deborah.  The  suggestion  that  Sally 
should  be  sent  over  to  England  did  not  find  favor  with 
her,  and  in  a  later  letter  Franklin  writes  to  her,  "I  am 
glad  that  you  find  so  much  reason  to  be  satisfy'd  with 
Mr.  Bache.  I  hope  all  will  prove  for  the  best."  And 
all  did  prove  for  the  best,  as  the  frequency  with  which 
Richard  Bache's  name  occurs  in  Franklin's  will,  to  say 
nothing  more,  sufficiently  attests.  When  the  marriage 
was  solemnized,  Franklin's  strong  family  affection  speedily 
crowned  it  with  his  full  approval.  In  due  season,  the 
fact  that  the  contract  was  a  fruitful  one  is  brought  to  our 
notice  by  a  letter  from  him  to  his  wife  in  which  he  tells 
his  "Dear  Child,"  then  his  wife  for  nearly  forty  years, 
that  he  had  written  to  Sally  by  Captain  Falkener  giving 
her  Sir  John  Pringle's  opinion  as  to  the  probability  of 
Sally's  son  having  been  rendered  exempt  from  the  small- 
pox by  inoculation.  Thenceforth  there  is  scarcely  a 
letter  from  the  grandfather  to  the  grandmother  in  which 
there  is  not  some  mention  made  of  this  grandson,  Benja- 
min Franklin  Bache,  the  rabid  Jeflersonian  and  editor 
of  after  years,  whose  vituperative  editorials  in  the  Aurora 
recall  Franklin's  statement  in  the  latter  part  of  his  life 
that  the  liberty  of  the  press  ought  to  be  attended  by  the 
ancient  liberty  of  the  cudgel.  "I  am  glad  your  little 
Grandson,"  says  one  letter,  "recovered  so  soon  of  his 
Illness,  as  I  see  you  are  quite  in  Love  with  him,  and  your 
Happiness  wrapt  up  in  his;  since  your  whole  long  Letter 
is  made  up  of  the  History  of  his  pretty  Actions."  In  a 
subsequent  letter  to  Deborah,  he  passes  to  the  boy's 
father,  who  had  come  over  to  England,  where  his  mother 
and  sisters  resided,  and  was  on  the  point  of  returning 
to  Philadelphia.  "Mr.  Bache  is  about  returning.  His 
Behaviour  here  has  been  very  agreeable  to  me.     I  have 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  239 

advis'd  him  to  settle  down  to  Business  in  Philadelphia, 
where  I  hope  he  will  meet  with  Success.  I  mentioned  to 
you  before,  that  I  saw  his  Mother  and  Sisters  at  Preston, 
who  are  genteel  People,  and  extreamly  agreeable."  In  the 
same  letter,  he  tells  Deborah  that  he  has  advised  Bache 
to  deal  in  the  ready  money  way  though  he  should  sell 
less. 

He  may  keep  his  Store  [he  said]  in  your  little  North 
Room  for  the  present.  And  as  he  will  be  at  no  expence  while 
the  Family  continues  with  you,  I  think  he  may,  with  Industry 
and  Frugality,  get  so  forward,  as  at  the  end  of  his  Term, 
to  pay  his  Debts  and  be  clear  of  the  World,  which  I  much  wish 
to  see.  I  have  given  him  £200  Sterl'g  to  add  something  to 
his  Cargo. 

It  is  not  long  before  he  is  writing  to  Deborah  about 
"Sister  Bache  and  her  amiable  Daughters."  Like  the 
commerce  of  material  gifts,  which  his  wife  and  himself 
kept  up  with  each  other,  when  separated,  are  the  details 
about  his  godson,  William  Hewson,  the  son  of  his  friend 
Polly,  which  he  exchanges  with  Deborah  for  details  about 
his  grandson,  who  came  to  be  known,  it  seems,  as  "the 
Little  King  Bird,"  and  the  "Young  Hercules." 

In  Return  for  your  History  of  your  Grandson  [he  wrote  to 
her  on  one  occasion],  I  must  give  you  a  little  of  the  History 
of  my  Godson.  He  is  now  21  Months  old,  very  strong  and 
healthy,  begins  to  speak  a  little,  and  even  to  sing.  He  was 
with  us  a  few  Days  last  Week,  grew  fond  of  me,  and  would 
not  be  contented  to  sit  down  to  Breakfast  without  coming 
to  call  Pa,  rejoicing  when  he  had  got  me  into  my  Place.  When 
seeing  me  one  Day  crack  one  of  the  Philada  Biscuits  into  my 
Tea  with  the  Nut-crackers,  he  took  another  and  try'd  to  do  the 
same  with  the  Tea-Tongs.  It  makes  me  long  to  be  at  home 
to  play  with  Ben. 

Indeed,  by  this  time,  Franklin  had  become  such  a 
fatuous  grandfather  that  he  ceases  to  call  his  grandson 


240       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Ben  and  speaks  of  him  as  "Benny  Boy  "  when  he  does  not 
speak  of  him  as  "the  dear  boy." 

In  the  fulness  of  time,  Richard  and  Sally  Bache  were 
destined  to  be  the  parents  of  numerous  children.  When 
Franklin  returned  from  his  mission  to  France,  the  youngest 
of  them  soon  became  as  devoted  to  him  as  had  been  Billy 
Hewson,  or  the  youthful  son  of  John  Jay,  whose  singular 
attachment  to  him  is  referred  to  in  one  of  his  letters  to 
Jay.  In  the  same  description,  in  which  Manasseh  Cutler 
speaks  in  such  sour  terms  of  the  person  of  Mrs.  Bache,  he 
tells  us  that,  when  he  saw  her  at  Franklin's  home  in 
Philadelphia,  she  had  three  of  her  children  about  her, 
over  whom  she  seemed  to  have  no  kind  of  command,  but 
who  appeared  to  be  excessively  fond  of  their  grandpapa. 
Indeed,  all  children  who  were  brought  into  close  com- 
panionship with  Franklin  loved  him,  and  instinctively 
turned  to  him  for  responsive  love  and  sympathy.  Men 
may  be  the  best  judges  of  the  human  intellect,  but  children 
are  the  best  judges  of  the  human  heart. 

Francis  Folger,  the  only  legitimate  child  of  Franklin 
except  Sally,  is  not  mentioned  in  his  correspondence  with 
his  wife.  The  colorless  Franky  who  is  was  not  this  child. 
Franklin's  son  was  born  a  year  after  the  marriage  of 
Franklin  and  Deborah  in  1730,  and  died,  when  a  little 
more  than  four  years  of  age,  and  therefore  long  before  the 
date  of  the  earliest  letter  extant  from  Franklin  to  Deborah. 
Though  warned  but  a  few  years  previously  by  an  epidemic 
of  smallpox  in  Philadelphia,  which  had  been  accompanied 
by  a  high  rate  of  mortality,  Franklin  could  not  make  up 
his  mind  to  subject  the  child  to  the  hazards  of  inoculation. 
The  consequence  was  that,  when  a  second  epidemic 
visited  the  city,  Francis  contracted  the  disease,  and 
died.  Franklin,  to  use  his  own  words  to  his  sister  Jane 
Mecom,  long  regretted  him  bitterly,  and  also  re- 
gretted that  he  had  not  given  him  the  disease  by  in- 
oculation. 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  241 

All,  who  have  seen  my  grandson  [he  said  in  another  letter 
to  his  sister]  agree  with  you  in  their  accounts  of  his  being 
an  uncommonly  fine  boy,  which  brings  often  afresh  to  my 
mind  the  idea  of  my  son  Franky,  though  now  dead  thirty- 
six  years,  whom  I  have  seldom  since  seen  equaled  in  every 
thing,  and  whom  to  this  day  I  cannot  think  of  without  a 
sigh. 

But  Sally  and  his  grandson  were  far  from  being  the 
only  persons  who  furnished  material  for  Franklin's  letters 
to  his  wife.  These  letters  also  bring  before  us  in  many 
ways  other  persons  connected  with  him  and  Deborah  by 
ties  of  blood,  service  or  friendship.  He  repeatedly 
sends  his  "duty"  to  his  mother-in-law,  Mrs.  Read,  and 
when  he  is  informed  of  the  death  of  "our  good  mother, " 
as  he  calls  her,  he  observes,  "'Tis,  I  am  sure,  a  Satis- 
faction to  me,  that  I  cannot  charge  myself  with  having 
ever  fail'd  in  one  Instance  of  Duty  and  Respect  to  her 
during  the  many  Years  that  she  call'd  me  Son."  "My 
love  to  Brother  John  Read  and  Sister,  and  cousin  Debbey, 
and  young  cousin  Johnny  Read,  and  let  them  all  know, 
that  I  sympathize  with  them  all  affectionately,"  was  his 
message  to  her  relations  in  the  same  letter. 

Some  of  his  letters  conveyed  much  agreeable  informa- 
tion to  Deborah  about  his  and  her  English  relations.  Of 
these  we  shall  have  something  to  say  in  another  connection. 

"Billy,"  William  Franklin,  is  mentioned  in  his  father's 
letters  to  Deborah  on  many  other  occasions  than  those 
already  cited  by  us;  for  he  was  his  father's  intimate  com- 
panion during  the  whole  of  the  first  mission  to  England. 
He  appears  to  have  truly  loved  his  sister,  Sally,  and  is 
often  mentioned  in  Franklin's  letters  to  Deborah  as 
sending  Sally  his  love  or  timely  gifts.  If  he  really  pre- 
sented his  duty  to  his  mother  half  as  often  as  Franklin 
reported,  she  had  no  cause  to  complain  of  his  lack  of  atten- 
tion. That  her  earlier  feelings  about  him  had  undergone 
a  decided  change,  before  he  went  to  England  with  his 


242       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

father,  we  may  infer  from  one  of  Franklin's  letters  in 
which,  in  response  to  her  "particular  inquiry,"  he  tells 
her  that  "Billy  is  of  the  Middle  Temple,  and  will  be  call'd 
to  the  Bar  either  this  Term  or  the  next."  Some  seven 
years  later,  he  tells  her  that  it  gave  him  pleasure  to  hear 
from  Major  Small  that  he  had  left  her  and  Sally  and 
"our  other  children"  well  also. 

Mention  of  Peter,  his  negro  servant,  is  also  several  times 
made  in  Franklin's  letters  to  Deborah.  In  one  letter, 
written  when  he  was  convalescing  after  a  severe  attack 
of  illness,  he  tells  Deborah  that  not  only  had  his  good 
doctor,  Doctor  Fothergill,  attended  him  very  carefully 
and  affectionately,  and  Mrs.  Stevenson  nursed  him 
kindly,  but  that  Billy  was  of  great  service  to  him,  and 
Peter  very  diligent  and  attentive.  But  a  later  letter 
does  not  give  quite  so  favorable  a  view  of  Peter,  after  the 
latter  had  inhaled  a  little  longer  the  free  air  of  England. 

Peter  continues  with  me  [said  Franklin]  and  behaves  as 
well  as  I  can  expect,  in  a  Country  where  they  are  many 
Occasions  of  spoiling  servants,  if  they  are  ever  so  good. 
He  has  a  few  Faults  as  most  of  them,  and  I  see  with  only 
one  Eye,  and  hear  only  with  one  Ear;  so  we  rub  on  pretty 
comfortably. 

These  words  smack  of  the  uxorious  policy  recommended 
to  husbands  by  Poor  Richard.  The  same  letter  gives  us  a 
glimpse  of  another  negro  servant,  who  was  even  more 
strongly  disposed  than  Peter  to  act  upon  the  statement 
in  Cowper's  Task  that  slaves  cannot  breathe  in  England. 

King,  that  you  enquire  after  [says  Franklin],  is  not  with  us. 
He  ran  away  from  our  House,  near  two  Years  ago,  while  we 
were  absent  in  the  Country;  But  was  soon  found  in  Suffolk, 
where  he  had  been  taken  in  the  Service  of  a  Lady,  that  was 
very  fond  of  the  Merit  of  making  him  a  Christian,  and  con- 
tributing to  his  Education  and  Improvement.  As  he  was  of 
little  Use,  and  often  in  Mischief,  Billy  consented  to  her  keeping 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  243 

him  while  we  stay  in  England.  So  the  Lady  sent  him  to 
School,  has  taught  him  to  read  and  write,  to  play  on  the  Violin 
and  French  Horn,  with  some  other  Accomplishments  more 
useful  in  a  Servant.  Whether  she  will  finally  be  willing  to  part 
with  him,  or  persuade  Billy  to  sell  him  to  her,  I  know  not.     In 

the  meantime  he  is  no  Expence  to  us. 

• 

And  that  was  certainly  something  worth  noting  about  a 
servant  who  could  play  upon  the  French  horn. 

But  it  is  of  Goody  Smith,  the  servant  in  the  Franklin 
household  at  Philadelphia,  whose  judgment  was  invoked 
upon  the  failure  of  Deborah  to  answer  her  husband's 
letter  from  Easton,  that  mention  is  most  often  made  in 
the  portions  of  Franklin's  letters  to  his  wife  which  relate 
to  servants.  In  a  letter  to  Deborah  from  Easton,  he 
expresses  his  obligations  to  Goody  Smith  for  remembering 
him  and  sends  his  love  to  her.  In  another  letter  to 
Deborah,  when  he  was  on  his  way  to  Williamsburg  in 
Virginia,  he  says,  "my  Duty  to  Mother,  and  love  to  Sally, 
Debby,  Gracey,  &c,  not  forgetting  the  Goodey."  Subse- 
quently, when  in  England,  he  tells  Deborah : 

I  have  order' d  two  large  print  Common  Prayer  Books  to 
be  bound  on  purpose  for  you  and  Goodey  Smith;  and  that  the 
largeness  of  the  Print  may  not  make  them  too  bulkey,  the 
Christnings,  Matrimonies,  and  everything  else  that  you  and 
she  have  not  immediate  and  constant  Occasion  for,  are  to  be 
omitted.  So  you  will  both  of  you  be  repriev'd  from  the  Use  of 
Spectacles  in  Church  a  little  longer. 

In  another  letter  from  England,  Franklin  mentions 
that  he  sends  Deborah  a  pair  of  garters  knit  by  Polly 
Stevenson  who  had  also  favored  him  with  a  pair.  '  ■  Goody 
Smith  may,  if  she  pleases,"  he  adds,  "make  such  for  me 
hereafter,  and  they  will  suit  her  own  fat  Knees. 
My  Love  to  her."  And  love  to  her  he  sends  again  when 
he  hears  that  she  is  recovering  from  an  illness.     Franklin 


244       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

likewise  refers  several  times  in  his  letters  to  Deborah  to 
another  servant,  John,  who  accompanied  him  on  his 
return  to  England  in  1764,  but  the  behavior  of  this  servant 
seems  to  have  been  too  unexceptionable  for  him  to  be 
a  conspicuous  figure  in  his  master's  letters.  They  were 
evidently  a  kind  master  and.  mistress,  Franklin  and 
Deborah.  "I  am  sorry  for  the  death  of  your  black  boy, " 
he  wrote  to  her  on  one  occasion  from  London,  "as  you 
seem  to  have  had  a  regard  for  him.  You  must  have 
suffered  a  good  deal  in  the  fatigue  of  nursing  him  in  such 
a  distemper.' ' 

Over  and  over  again  in  his  letters  to  Deborah,  Franklin 
approves  himself  a  "lover  of  his  friends"  like  his  friend 
Robert  Grace.  He  sends  his  love  to  them  individually, 
and  he  sends  his  love  to  them  collectively.  Even  during 
a  brief  absence,  as  when  he  was  off  on  his  military  expedi- 
tion, his  letters  to  Deborah  are  sprinkled  with  such 
messages  as  "our  Compliments  to  Mrs.  Masters  and  all 
enquiring  Friends, "  "My  Love  to  Mr.  Hall"  (his  business 
partner),  "Give  my  hearty  Love  to  all  Friends,"  "Love 
to  all  our  friends  and  neighbours."  During  another 
brief  absence  in  Virginia,  he  sends  his  respects  to  "Mrs. 
Masters  and  all  the  Officers  and  in  short  to  all  Philadel- 
phia. "  In  a  later  letter  to  Deborah,  written  from  Utrecht, 
the  form  of  his  concluding  words  on  the  previous  occasion 
is  made  still  more  comprehensive.  "My  Love,"  he 
said,  "to  my  dear  Sally,  and  affectionate  Regards  to-all 
Pennsylvania."  In  one  of  his  letters  from  England,  he 
wrote,  "Pray  remember  me  kindly  to  all  that  love  us,  and 
to  all  that  we  love.  Tis  endless  to  name  names, "  and  on 
still  another  occasion,  in  asking  Deborah  to  thank  all 
his  friends  for  their  favors,  which  contributed  so  much 
to  the  comfort  of  his  voyage,  he  added,  "I  have  not  time 
to  name  Names:  You  know  whom  I  love  and  honour." 
He  had  such  troops  of  friends  that  he  might  well  shrink 
from   the   weariness   of   naming   them   all.     Indeed,  he 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  245 

scarcely  writes  a  letter  to  Deborah  that  does  not  bear 
witness  to  the  extent  and  warmth  of  his  friendships. 
When  he  left  Philadelphia  for  England  in  1757,  about  a 
dozen  of  his  friends  accompanied  him  as  far  as  Trenton, 
but,  in  the  letter  to  Deborah  which  informs  us  of  this 
fact,  he  does  not  give  us  the  names  of  any  of  them.  This 
letter  was  written  from  Trenton.  Mrs.  Grace  and 
"Dear  Precious  Mrs.  Shewell,"  Mrs.  Masters,  "Mrs. 
Galloway  &  Miss,"  Mrs.  Redman,  Mrs.  Graeme,  Mrs. 
Thomson,  Mrs.  Story,  Mrs.  Bartram,  Mrs.  Smith  and 
Mrs.  Hilborne  all  come  in  at  one  time,  as  well  as  other 
ladies  whom  he  does  not  name,  for  his  best  respects,  in 
return  for  friendly  wishes  that  they  had  transmitted  to 
him  through  Deborah.  In  another  letter  he  sends  his 
love  to  "our  dear  precious  Polly  Hunt  and  all  our  kind 
inquiring  friends."  Friends  escorted  him  to  Trenton 
when  he  was  on  his  way  to  England  in  1757,  friends 
bestowed  all  sorts  of  gifts  on  him  to  render  his  voyage 
comfortable,  Mr.  Thomas  Wharton  even  lending  him  a 
woollen  gown  which  he  found  a  comfortable  companion 
in  his  winter  passage;  friends  did  him  the  honor  to  drink 
his  health  in  the  unfinished  kitchen  of  the  new  house 
built  in  his  absence;  and  friends  "honored"  the  dining- 
room  in  this  home  "with  their  Company."  When  he 
heard  of  the  convivial  gathering  in  the  unfinished  kitchen, 
he  wrote  to  Deborah,  "I  hope  soon  to  drink  with  them  in 
the  Parlour,"  but  there  is  a  tinge  of  dissatisfaction  in 
his  observations  to  Deborah  on  the  gathering  in  the 
dining-room. 

It  gives  me  Pleasure  [he  said]  that  so  many  of  my  Friends 
honour 'd  our  new  Dining  Room  with  their  Company.  You 
tell  me  only  of  a  Fault  they  found  with  the  House,  that  it 
was  too  little,  and  not  a  Word  of  anything  they  lik'd  in  it: 
Nor  how  the  Kitchen  Chimneys  perform;  so  I  suppose  you 
spare  me  some  Mortification,  which  [he  adds  with  a  slight 
inflection  of  sarcasm]  is  kind. 


246       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

His  dear  friend,  Mr.  Rhodes,  Mr.  Wharton,  Mr. 
Roberts,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Dufneld,  Neighbor  Thomson, 
Dr.  and  Mrs.  Redman,  Mrs.  Hopkinson,  Mr.  Duche, 
Dr.  Morgan  and  Mr.  Hopkinson  are  other  friends  men- 
tioned in  a  later  letter  of  his  to  Deborah.  In  the  same 
letter,  he  rejoices  that  his  "good  old  Friend,  Mr.  Coleman, 
is  got  safe  home,  and  continues  well."  Coleman,  as  we 
shall  see,  was  one  of  the  two  friends  who  had  come  to  his 
aid  in  his  early  manhood  when  he  was  sued  and  threatened 
with  ruin  by  his  creditors.  The  death  of  the  dear,  amiable 
Miss  Ross,  "our  Friend  Bond's  heavy  loss,"  the  disorder 
that  had  befallen  "our  friend  Kinnersley"  and  other 
kindred  facts  awaken  his  ready  sympathy;  presents  of 
books,  seeds  and  the  like,  as  well  as  messages  of  love  and 
respect,  remind  his  friends  how  freshly  green  his  memory 
of  them  is. 

The  letters  have  much  to  say,  too,  about  the  presents 
to  Deborah  and  Sally  which  were  almost  incessantly 
crossing  the  outflowing  currents  of  apples  and  buckwheat 
meal  from  Philadelphia.  These  presents  are  far  too 
numerous  to  be  all  specified  by  us,  but  some  perhaps  it 
may  not  be  amiss  to  recall.  In  one  letter,  he  writes  to 
Deborah  that  he  is  sending  her  a  large  case  marked  D.  F. 
No.  1  and  a  small  box  marked  D.  F.  No.  2,  and  that 
in  the  large  case  is  another  small  box  containing  some 
English  china,  viz.:  melons  and  leaves  for  a  dessert  of 
fruit  and  cream,  or  the  like;  a  bowl  remarkable  for  the 
neatness  of  the  figures,  made  at  Bow  near  London,  some 
coffee  cups  of  the  same  make,  and  a  Worcester  bowl, 
ordinary.  In  the  same  box,  to  show  the  difference  of 
workmanship,  he  said,  there  was  something  from  all  the 
china  works  in  England  and  one  old  true  china  basin 
mended  of  an  odd  color,  four  silver  salt  ladles,  newest 
but  ugliest  fashion,  a  little  instrument  to  core  apples, 
another  to  make  little  turnips  out  of  great  ones  and 
six  coarse  diaper  breakfast  cloths.     The  latter,  he  stated, 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  247 

were  to  be  spread  on  the  tea  table,  for  nobody  breakfasted 
in  London  on  the  naked  table  but  on  the  cloth  set  a  large 
tea  board  with  the  cups.  In  the  large  case  were  likewise 
some  carpeting  for  a  best  room  floor,  and  bordering  to  go 
along  with  it,  also  two  large  fine  Flanders  bed- ticks,  two 
pair  of  large  superfine  fine  blankets,  two  fine  damask 
table-cloths  and  napkins,  and  forty -three  ells  of  Ghentish 
sheeting  Holland,  all  of  which  Deborah  had  ordered  of 
him;  also  fifty-six  yards  of  cotton,  printed  curiously 
from  copper  plates,  a  new  invention,  to  make  bed  and 
window  curtains,  and  seven  yards  of  chair  bottoms 
printed  in  the  same  way  very  neat.  "  These  were  my 
Fancy,"  Franklin  remarks,  "but  Mrs.  Stevenson  tells  me 
I  did  wrong  not  to  buy  both  of  the  same  Colour."  In  the 
large  case,  too,  were  seven  yards  of  printed  cotton,  blue 
ground,  to  make  Deborah  a  gown. 

I  bought  it  by  Candlelight,  and  lik'd  it  then  [the  letter 
said],  but  not  so  well  afterwards.  If  you  do  not  fancy  it,  send 
it  as  a  Present  from  me  to  sister  Jenny.  There  is  a  better 
Gown  for  you,  of  flower'd  Tissue,  16  yards,  of  Mrs.  Steven- 
son's Fancy,  cost  9  Guineas;  and  I  think  it  a  great  Beauty. 
There  was  no  more  of  the  Sort,  or  you  should  have  had  enough 
for  a  Negligee  or  Suit. 

There  is  also  Snuffers,  Snuff  Stand,  and  Extinguisher  of 
Steel,  which  I  send  for  the  Beauty  of  the  Work.  The  Ex- 
tinguisher is  for  Spermaceti  Candles  only,  and  is  of  a  new 
Contrivance,  to  preserve  the  Snuff  upon  the  Candle. 

Small  box  No.  2  contained  cut  table  glass  of  several 
sorts.  After  stating  its  contents,  Franklin  adds,  "I  am 
about  buying  a  compleat  Set  of  Table  China,  2  Cases 
of  silver  handled  Knives  and  Forks,  and  2  pair  Silver 
Candlesticks;  but  these  shall  keep  to  use  here  till  my 
Return,  as  I  am  obliged  sometimes  to  entertain  polite 
Company." 

But  there  is  nothing  in  this  letter  equal  in  interest  to 


248       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

the  paragraph  that  brings  to  our  mental  eye  the  handsome, 
buxom  figure  of  Deborah  herself. 

I  forgot  to  mention  another  of  my  Fancyings,  viz.:  a.  Pair  of 
Silk  Blankets,  very  fine.  They  are  of  a  new  kind,  were  just 
taken  in  a  French  Prize,  and  such  were  never  seen  in  England 
before:  they  are  called  Blankets,  but  I  think  will  be  very  neat 
to  cover  a  Summer  Bed,  instead  of  a  Quilt  or  Counterpain. 
I  had  no  Choice,  so  you  will  excuse  the  Soil  on  some  of  the 
Folds;  your  Neighbour  Forster  can  get  it  off.  I  also  forgot, 
among  the  China,  to  mention  a  large  fine  Jugg  for  Beer,  to 
stand  in  the  Cooler.  I  fell  in  Love  with  it  at  first  Sight ;  for  I 
thought  it  look'd  like  a  fat  jolly  Dame,  clean  and  tidy,  with  a 
neat  blue  and  white  Calico  Gown  on,  good  natur'd  and  lovely, 
and  put  me,  in  mind  of — Somebody.  It  has  the  Coffee  Cups 
in  its  Belly,1  pack'd  in  best  Chrystal  Salt,  of  a  peculiar  nice 
Flavour,  for  the  Table,  not  to  be  powder' d. 

The  receipt  of  such  a  case  and  box  as  these  was  doubtless 
an  event  long  remembered  in  the  Franklin  home  at 
Philadelphia.  In  a  subsequent  letter  from  Franklin  to 
Deborah,  the  following  gifts  to  Sally  are  brought  to  our 
attention : 

By  Capt.  Lutwidge  I  sent  my  dear  Girl  a  newest  fashion'd 
white  Hat  and  Cloak,  and  sundry  little  things,  which  I  hope 

1  The  only  blot  upon  the  useful  labors  of  Jared  Sparks,  as  the  editor 
of  Franklin's  productions,  is  the  liberties  that  he  took  with  their  wording. 
Sometimes  his  alterations  were  the  offspring  of  good  feeling,  sometimes 
of  ordinary  puristic  scruples,  and  occasionally  of  the  sickly  prudery  which 
led  our  American  grandfathers  and  grandmothers  to  speak  of  the  leg  of  a 
turkey  as  its  "drum-stick."  The  word  "belly"  appears  to  have  been 
especially  trying  to  his  nice  sense  of  propriety.  One  result  was  these 
scornful  strictures  by  Albert  Henry  Smyth  in  the  Introduction  to  his 
edition  of  Franklin's  writings:  "He  is  nice  in  his  use  of  moral  epithets; 
he  will  not  offend  one  stomach  with  his  choice  of  words.  Franklin  speaks 
of  the  Scots  '  who  entered  England  and  trampled  on  its  belly  as  far  as  Derby, ' 
— 'marched  on, '  says  Sparks.  Franklin  is  sending  some  household  articles 
from  London  to  Philadelphia.  In  the  large  packing  case  is  'a  jug  for  beer.' 
It  has,  he  says,  '  the  coffee  cups  in  its  belly. '  Sparks  performs  the  same 
abdominal  operation  here." 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  249 

will  get  safe  to  hand.  I  now  send  her  a  pair  of  Buckles, 
made  of  French  Paste  Stones,  which  are  next  in  Lustre  to 
Diamonds.  They  cost  three  Guineas,  and  are  said  to  be 
cheap  at  that  Price. 

These  were  but  a  few  of  the  many  gifts  that  Deborah 
and  Sally  received  from  Franklin,  when  he  was  in  London. 
In  their  relations  to  their  own  households,  philosophers 
are  frequently  not  unlike  the  ancient  one,  who,  when  told 
by  a  messenger  that  his  house  was  on  fire,  looked  up  for 
a  minute  from  his  task  to  say  impatiently  that  his  wife 
attended  to  all  his  domestic  affairs.  This  is  not  true  of 
Franklin,  who  was  wholly  free  from  the  crass  ignorance 
and  maladroit  touch  which  render  many  husbands  as 
much  out  of  place  in  their  own  houses  as  the  officious  ass 
in  ^Esop's  fable  was  in  his  master's  dining-hall.  Even 
the  fences,  the  well  and  the  vegetable  garden  at  times  are 
mentioned  in  his  letters  to  Deborah,  and  his  mechanical 
skill  stood  him  in  good  stead  as  a  householder.  He 
knew  how  the  carpets  should  be  laid  down,  what  stuff 
should  be  purchased  for  curtains  in  the  blue  chamber, 
and  by  what  kind  of  hooks  they  should  be  fastened  to  the 
curtain  rails,  and  the  number  of  curtains  at  each  window 
that  the  London  fashions  required.  In  one  letter  he  gives 
Deborah  minute  instructions  as  to  how  the  blue  room  in 
his  Philadelphia  home  was  to  be  painted  and  papered. 
In  a  subsequent  letter,  after  saying  that  he  was  glad  to 
hear  that  certain  pictures  were  safe  arrived  at  Philadelphia, 
he  adds,  "You  do  not  tell  me  who  mounted  the  great  one, 
nor  where  you  have  hung  it  up." 

In  his  relations  to  his  home,  at  any  rate,  we  can  discern 
nothing  of  the  lack  of  order,  with  which  he  was  so  frank 
in  reproaching  himself.  During  the  time  that  he  was 
detained  in  New  York  by  Lord  Loudon,  he  several  times 
had  occasion  to  send  a  message  to  his  wife  about  something 
that  he  had  left  behind  in  his  house  at  Philadelphia,  or 
in  his  house  at  Woodbridge  in  New  Jersey,  and  nothing 


250       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

could  be  more  exact  than  his  recollection  as  to  just  where 
each  thing  was.  He  writes  for  his  best  spectacles;  he  had 
left  them  on  the  table,  he  said,  meaning  at  Woodbridge. 
In  the  right  hand  little  drawer  under  his  desk  in  Phil- 
adelphia was  some  of  the  Indian  Lady's  gut-cambric; 
it  was  to  be  rolled  up  like  a  ribbon,  wrapt  in  paper  and 
placed  in  the  Indian  seal  skin  hussirT,  with  the  other 
things  already  in  it,  and  the  hussiff  was  to  be  forwarded 
to  him.  It  would  be  an  acceptable  present  to  a  gimcrack 
great  man  in  London  that  was  his  friend.  In  certain 
places  on  his  book- shelves  at  Woodbridge,  which  he  pre- 
cisely locates,  were  the  Gardener's  Dictionary,  by  P. 
Miller,  and  the  Treatise  on  Cydermaking.  They  were  to 
be  delivered  to  Mr.  Parker. 

Occasional  shadows,  of  course,  fall  across  the  happy 
and  honored  life  reflected  in  Franklin's  letters  to  Deborah. 
We  cannot  have  the  evening,  however  soft  and  still, 
without  its  fading  light;  or,  as  Franklin  himself  put  it  in 
one  of  these  letters,  "we  are  not  to  expect  it  will  be 
always  Sunshine."  Strenuous  and  absorbing  as  were  his 
public  tasks  during  each  of  his  missions  to  England; 
signalized  as  the  latter  were  by  the  honors  conferred  on 
him  by  ancient  seats  of  learning,  and  the  attentions  paid 
him  by  illustrious  men;  charming  and  refreshing  as  were 
his  excursions  for  health  and  recreation  about  the  British 
Islands  and  on  the  Continent,  and  his  hours  of  social 
relaxation  in  the  country  houses  of  England,  Scotland  and 
Ireland;  supplied  as  he  was  at  No.  7  Craven  Street  with 
every  domestic  comfort  that  the  assiduous  management 
of  Mrs.  Stevenson — who  even  took  care  that  his  shirts 
should  be  well-aired  as  Deborah  directed — could  provide, 
his  thoughts,  now  and  then,  as  we  have  seen,  tristfully 
reverted  to  his  home  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic. 
Some  six  months  after  his  arrival  in  England  in  1757,  he 
expressed  the  hope  that,  if  he  stayed  another  winter,  it 
would  be  more  agreeable  than  the  greatest  part  of  the  time 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  251 

that  he  had  spent  in  England.  Some  two  months  after 
his  return  to  England  in  1764,  he  writes  to  Deborah 
that  he  hopes  that  a  few  months — the  few  months  slid 
into  ten  years — will  finish  affairs  in  England  to  his  wish, 
and  bring  him  to  that  retirement  and  repose,  with  his 
little  family,  so  suitable  to  his  years,  and  which  he  has  so 
long  set  his  heart  upon.  Some  four  years  later,  he  wrote  to 
Deborah: 

I  feel  stronger  and  more  active.  Yet  I  would  not  have 
you  think  that  I  fancy  I  shall  grow  young  again.  I  know 
that  men  of  my  Bulk  often  fail  suddenly:  I  know  that 
according  to  the  Course  of  Nature  I  cannot  at  most  continue 
much  longer,  and  that  the  living  even  of  another  Day  is  un- 
certain. I  therefore  now  form  no  Schemes,  but  such  as  are  of 
immediate  Execution;  indulging  myself  in  no  future  Prospect 
except  one,  that  of  returning  to  Philadelphia,  there  to  spend 
the  Evening  of  Life  with  my  Friends  and  Family. 

There  was  a  time  when  he  loved  England  and  would 
perhaps  have  contentedly  lived  and  died  there,  if  his  Lares 
and  Penates  could  have  been  enticed  into  taking  up 
their  abode  there.  With  his  broad,  tolerant,  jocund 
nature,  he  was,  it  must  be  confessed,  not  a  little  like  a 
hare,  which  soon  makes  a  form  for  itself  wherever  it 
happens  to  crouch.  The  homesickness,  which  colors 
a  few  of  his  letters,  is  to  no  little  extent  the  legacy  of 
illness.  But  much  as  he  was  absent  from  home,  alchemist 
as  he  always  was  in  transmuting  all  that  is  disagreeable 
in  life  into  what  is  agreeable,  or  at  least  endurable,  the 
family  hearthside  never  ceased  to  have  a  bright,  cheerful 
glow  for  his  well-ordered,  home-loving  nature. 

Grave  illness  was  more  than  once  his  lot  during  his 
mission  to  England.1     Shortly  after  his  arrival  in   that 

1  The  maladies  to  which  Franklin  was  subject,  and  the  spells  of  illness 
that  he  experienced,  like  everything  else  relating  to  him,  have  been  de- 
scribed in  detail_by  at  least  one  of  his  enthusiastic  latter-day  biographers. 


252       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

country  in  1757,  he  was  seized  with  a  violent  attack  of 
sickness,  accompanied  by  delirium,  which  left  him  in  an 
invalid  condition  for  quite  a  time.  From  the  account 
that  he  gives  of  the  cupping,  vomiting  and  purging  that  he 
underwent,  under  the  care  of  good  Doctor  Fothergill, 
there  would  seem  to  have  been  no  lack  of  opportunity  for 
the  escape  of  the  disease,  which,  judging  by  the  amount  of 
bark  that  he  took  in  substance  and  infusion,  was  probably 
some  form  of  malarial  fever.  This  attack  gives  a  de- 
cidedly valetudinary  tone  to  one  of  his  subsequent  letters 
to  Deborah.  "I  am  much  more  tender  than  I  us'd  to  be, " 
he  said,  "and  sleep  in  a  short  Callico  Bedgown  with  close 
Sleeves,  and  Flannel  close-footed  Trousers;  for  without 
them  I  get  no  warmth  all  Night.  So  it  seems  I  grow  older 
apace."  Deborah's  health,  too,  about  this  time  was  not 
overgood,  for,  a  few  months  later,  he  writes  to  her :  * '  It 
gives  me  Concern  to  receive  such  frequent  Accts  of  your 
being  indisposed;  but  we  both  of  us  grow  in  Years,  and 
must  expect  our  Constitutions,  though  tolerably  good  in 
themselves,  will  by  degrees  give  way  to  the  Infirmities  of 
Age. ' '  Shortly  after  Franklin's  arrival  in  England  in  1 764, 
he  was  seized  with  another  attack  of  illness,  but  he  was  soon 
able  to  declare  that,  thanks  to  God,  he  was  got  perfectly 
well,  his  cough  being  quite  gone,  and  his  arms  mending,  so 
that  he  could  dress  and  undress  himself,  if  he  chose  to 
endure  a  little  pain.  A  few  months  later,  he  says  it 
rejoices  him  to  learn  that  Deborah  is  freer  than  she  used 
to  be  from  the  headache  and  the  pain  in  her  side.  He 
himself,  he  said,  was  likewise  in  perfect  health.  Again 
he  writes  to  Deborah  in  the  succeeding  year:  "I  con- 
gratulate you  on  the  soon  expected  Repeal  of  the  Stamp 
Act ;  and  on  the  great  Share  of  Health  we  both  enjoy,  tho' 
now  going  in  Fourscore  (that  is,  in  the  fourth  score)." 

We  are  content,  however,  to  be  classed  among  those  biographers  in 
whose  eyes  no  amount  of  genius  can  hallow  an  ague  or  glorify  a  cutaneous 
affection. 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  253 

He  was  not  allowed,  however,  to  indulge  long  the  spirit  of 
congratulation,  for,  a  few  months  later,  one  of  his  letters 
to  Deborah  brings  to  our  knowledge  the  fact  that  he  had 
been  very  ill.  After  his  recovery  from  this  illness,  he  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  attacked  by  anything  again  while 
in  England,  beyond  a  fit  or  so  of  the  gout,  and  in  1768  he 
readily  assents  to  the  statement  of  Deborah  that  they 
were  both  blessed  with  a  great  share  of  health  considering 
their  years,  then  sixty-three.  A  few  years  more,  however, 
and  Franklin's  correspondence  indicates  plainly  enough 
that  this  statement  was  no  longer  applicable  to  Deborah. 
In  the  letter  last-mentioned,  her  husband  writes  to  her 
that  he  wonders  to  hear  that  his  friends  were  backward 
in  bringing  her  his  letters  when  they  arrived,  and  thinks 
it  must  be  a  mere  imagination  of  hers,  the  effect  of  some 
melancholy  humor  she  happened  then  to  be  in;  and  some 
four  years  afterwards  he  recommends  to  her  a  dietary 
for  the  preservation  of  her  health  and  the  improvement 
of  her  spirits.  But  both  were  then  beyond  repair,  and, 
two  years  later,  she  was  in  the  Elysian  fields  where,  despite 
what  was  reported,  as  we  shall  see,  by  Franklin  to  Madame 
Helve  tins  about  his  Eurydice  and  M.  Helve  tius,  it  is 
impossible  to  believe  that  she,  faithful,  loving  creature 
that  she  was,  did  anything  but  inconsolably  await  his 
coming. 

Of  course,  we  are  not  wholly  dependent  upon  Franklin's 
letters  to  Deborah  for  details  relating  to  Sally  and  Richard 
Bache.  A  very  readable  letter  of  his  is  the  one  written 
by  him  to  Sally  from  Reedy  Island  on  his  way  to  England 
in  1764.  Its  opening  sentences  bring  home  to  us  anew 
the  multitude  of  his  friends  and  the  fervid  enthusiasm 
of  their  friendship. 

Our  good  friends,  Mr.  Galloway,  Mr.  Wharton,  and  Mr. 
James,  came  with  me  in  the  ship  from  Chester  to  New  Castle 
and  went  ashore  there  [he  said].  It  was  kind  to  favour  me 
with  their  good  company  as  far  as  they  could.     The  affection- 


254       Benjamin  Franklin  Self- Revealed 

ate  leave  taken  of  me  by  so  many  friends  at  Chester  was 
very  endearing.     God  bless  them  and  all  Pennsylvania. 

Then,  after  observing  that  the  natural  prudence  and 
goodness  of  heart,  with  which  God  had  blessed  Sally, 
made  it  less  necessary  for  him  to  be  particular  in  giving 
her  advice,  Franklin  tells  her  that  the  more  attentively 
dutiful  and  tender  she  was  towards  her  good  mama  the 
more  she  would  recommend  herself  to  him,  adding,  "But 
why  should  I  mention  me,  when  you  have  so  much  higher 
a  promise  in  the  commandments,  that  such  conduct  will 
recommend  you  to  the  favour  of  God."  After  this,  he 
warns  her  that  her  conduct  should  be  all  the  more  cir- 
cumspect, that  no  advantage  might  be  given  to  the 
malevolence  of  his  political  enemies,  directs  her  to  go 
constantly  to  church  and  advises  her  in  his  absence  to 
acquire,  those  useful  accomplishments,  arithmetic  and 
book-keeping. 

In  his  next  letter  to  Sally,  he  tells  her  that  he  has  met 
her  husband  at  Preston,  where  he  had  been  kindly  enter- 
tained for  two  or  three  days  by  her  husband's  mother  and 
sisters,  whom  he  liked  much.  The  comfort  that  this 
assurance  gave  to  a  wife,  who  had  never  met  her  husband's 
relatives,  can  be  readily  appreciated.  He  had  advised 
Bache,  he  said,  to  settle  down  to  business  in  Philadelphia, 
where  he  would  always  be  with  her;  almost  any  profession 
a  man  has  been  educated  in  being  preferable,  in  his 
opinion,  to  an  office  held  at  pleasure,  as  rendering  him 
more  independent,  more  a  freeman,  and  less  subject  to  the 
caprices  of  superiors.  This  means,  of  course,  that  the 
Baches,  too,  were  looking  for  a  seat  in  the  Post-Office 
carryall,  in  which  room  was  found  for  so  many  of  Frank- 
lin's relations  and  protigis. 

By  Industry  &  Frugality  [Franklin  further  said],  you  may 
get  forward  in  the  World,  being  both  of  you  yet  young.  And 
then  what  we  may  leave  you  at  our  Death  may  be  a  pretty 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  255 

Addition,  tho'  of  itself  far  from  sufficient  to  maintain  &  bring 
up  a  Family.  It  is  of  the  more  Importance  for  you  to  think 
seriously  of  this,  as  you  may  have  a  Number  of  Children  to 
educate.  'Till  my  Return  you  need  be  at  no  Expence  for 
Rent,  etc,  as  you  are  all  welcome  to  continue  with  your 
Mother,  and  indeed  it  seems  to  be  your  Duty  to  attend  her, 
as  she  grows  infirm,  and  takes  much  Delight  in  your  Company 
and  the  Child's.  This  Saving  will  be  a  Help  in  your  Progress: 
And  for  your  Encouragement  I  can  assure  you  that  there  is 
scarce  a  Merchant  of  Opulence  in  your  Town,  whom  I  do 
not  remember  a  young  Beginner  with  as  little  to  go  on  with,  & 
no  better  Prospects  than  Mr.  Bache. 

Ben  of  course  is  not  overlooked.  "I  am  much  pleas'd 
with  the  Ace*  I  receive  from  all  Hands  of  your  dear  little 
Boy.  I  hope  he  will  be  continu'd  a  Blessing  to  us  all." 
It  must  have  been  a  great  gratification  to  him  to  learn 
that  Betsey,  William  Franklin's  wife,  as  well  as  Deborah, 
had  stood  as  godmother  for  the  child.  In  his  next  letter 
to  Sally,  acknowledging  the  receipt  of  a  pleasing  letter 
from  her,  he  states  that  he  is  glad  that  she  has  undertaken 
the  care  of  the  housekeeping,  as  it  would  be  an  ease  to  her 
mother,  especially  if  she  could  manage  to  her  approbation. 
"That,"  he  commented  significantly,  "may  perhaps  be 
at  first  a  Difficulty."1  It  would  be  of  use  to  her,  he  con- 
tinued, if  she  would  get  a  habit  of  keeping  exact  accounts, 
and  it  would  be  some  satisfaction  to  him  to  see  them, 
for  she  should  remember,  for  her  encouragement  in  good 
economy,  that,  whatever  a  child  saves  of  its  parents' 
money,  will  be  its  own  another  day.  "Study,"  the 
letter  concludes,  "Poor  Richard  a  little,  and  you  may 

1  "I  must  mention  to  you,"  Sally  said  in  a  letter  to  her  father,  dated 
Oct.  30,  1773,  "that  I  am  no  longer  housekeeper;  it  gave  my  dear  mama 
so  much  uneasiness,  and  the  money  was  given  to  me  in  a  manner  which 
made  it  impossible  to  save  anything  by  laying  in  things  beforehand,  so 
that  my  housekeeping  answered  no  good  purpose,  and  I  have  the  more 
readily  given  it  up,  though  I  think  it  my  duty,  and  would  willingly  take 
the  care  and  trouble  off  of  her,  could  I  possibly  please  and  make  her  happy." 


256       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

find  some  Benefit  from  his  Instructions."  These  letters 
were  all  written  from  London.  The  rest  of  Franklin's  let- 
ters to  Sally  alone  were  written  from  Passy.  In  the  first 
he  says  that,  if  she  knew  how  happy  her  letters  made  him, 
and  considered  how  many  of  them  miscarried,  she  would, 
he  thought,  write  oftener.  A  daughter  had  then  been 
added  to  the  members  of  the  Bache  household,  and  that 
he  had  a  word  to  pen  about  her  goes  almost  without 
saying.  He  expresses  the  hope  that  Sally  would  again  be 
out  of  the  city  during  the  hot  months  for  the  sake  of  this 
child's  health,  "for  I  begin  to  love  the  dear  little  creature 
from  your  description  of  her,"  he  said.  This  was  the 
letter  in  which  Sally  was  so  pointedly  scored  for  not 
living  more  simply  and  frugally. 

I  was  charmed  [he  declared]  with  the  account  you  gave  me 
of  your  industry,  the  table  cloths  of  your  own  spinning,  &c. ; 
but  the  latter  part  of  the  paragraph,  that  you  had  sent  for  linen 
from  France,  because  weaving  and  flax  were  grown  dear, 
alas,  that  dissolved  the  charm;  and  your  sending  for  long 
black  pins,  and  lace,  and  feathers!  disgusted  me  as  much  as  if 
you  had  put  salt  into  my  strawberries.  The  spinning,  I  see, 
is  laid  aside,  and  you  are  to  be  dressed  for  the  ball!  You 
seem  not  to  know,  my  dear  daughter,  that,  of  all  the  dear 
things  in  this  world,  idleness  is  the  dearest,  except  mischief. 

Then  Ben  as  usual  comes  in  for  notice.  As  he  intended 
him  for  a  Presbyterian  as  well  as  a  Republican,  he  had 
sent  him  to  finish  his  education  at  Geneva,  Franklin 
stated. 

He  is  much  grown  [he  continues]  in  very  good  health, 
draws  a  little,  as  you  will  see  by  the  enclosed,  learns  Latin, 
writing,  arithmetic,  and  dancing,  and  speaks  French  better 
than  English.  He  made  a  translation  of  your  last  letter 
to  him,  so  that  some  of  your  works  may  now  appear  in  a 
foreign  language. 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  257 

A  few  sentences  more,  with  regard  to  her  second  son, 
Will,  and  another  topic  and  there  is  a  regurgitation  of 
his  disgust  over  Sally's  extravagance. 

When  I  began  [he  said]  to  read  your  account  of  the  high 
prices  of  goods,  "a  pair  of  gloves,  $7 ;  a  yard  of  common  gauze, 
$24,  and  that  it  now  required  a  fortune  to  maintain  a  family 
in  a  very  plain  way,"  I  expected  you  would  conclude  with 
telling  me,  that  everybody  as  well  as  yourself  was  grown  frugal 
and  industrious;  and  I  could  scarce  believe  my  eyes  in  reading 
forward,  that  "there  never  was  so  much  pleasure  and  dressing 
going  on,"  and  that  you  yourself  wanted  black  pins  and 
feathers  from  France  to  appear,  I  suppose,  in  the  mode!  This 
leads  me  to  imagine,  that  it  is  perhaps  not  so  much  that  the 
goods  are  grown  dear,  as  that  the  money  is  grown  cheap, 
as  everything  else  will  do  when  excessively  plenty;  and  that 
people  are  still  as  easy  nearly  in  their  circumstances,  as  when  a 
pair  of  gloves  might  be  had  for  half  a  crown.  The  war  indeed 
may  in  some  degree  raise  the  prices  of  goods,  and  the  high 
taxes  which  are  necessary  to  support  the  war  may  make  our 
frugality  necessary;  and,  as  I  am  always  preaching  that 
doctrine,  I  cannot  in  conscience  or  in  decency  encourage  the 
contrary,  by  my  example,  in  furnishing  my  children  with 
foolish  modes  and  luxuries.  I  therefore  send  all  the  articles 
you  desire,  that  are  useful  and  necessary,  and  omit  the  rest; 
for,  as  you  say  you  should  "have  great  pride  in  wearing  any- 
thing I  send,  and  showing  it  as  your  father's  taste,"  I  must 
avoid  giving  you  an  opportunity  of  doing  that  with  either 
lace  or  feathers.  If  you  wear  your  cambric  ruffles  as  I  do, 
and  take  care  not  to  mend  the  holes,  they  will  come  in  time 
to  be  lace,  and  feathers,  my  dear  girl,  may  be  had  in  America 
from  every  cock's  tail. 

Franklin's  last  letter  to  Sally  was  written  from  Passy, 
and  contains  the  inimitable  strictures  on  the  Order  of  the 
Cincinnati,  to  which  we  shall  hereafter  return,  but  nothing 
of  any  personal  or  domestic  interest. 

Two  of  the  letters  of  Franklin  are  written  to  Sally  and 
her  husband  together.     "Dear  Son  and  Daughter,"  is 

VOL.  I— 17 


258       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

the  way  he  begins,  and  one  ends,  "I  am  ever  my  dear 
Children,  your  affectionate  Father." 

Both  of  these  letters  were  written  from  Passy.  One  of 
them,  in  addition  to  letting  the  parents  know  that  Ben 
promised  to  be  a  stout,  as  well  as  a  good,  man,  presents 
with  no  little  pathos  the  situation  of  the  writer  on  the  eve 
of  his  departure  from  France  for  Philadelphia  in  1785. 
After  mentioning  his  efforts  to  engage  some  good  vessel 
bound  directly  for  Philadelphia,  which  would  agree  to 
take  him  on  board  at  Havre  with  his  grandsons,  servants 
and  baggage,  he  sketches  this  lugubrious  picture  of 
himself. 

Infirm  as  I  am,  I  have  need  of  comfortable  Room  and 
Accommodations.  I  was  miserably  lodg'd  in  coming  over 
hither,  which  almost  demolish'd  me.  I  must  be  better  stow'd 
now,  or  I  shall  not  be  able  to  hold  out  the  Voyage.  Indeed 
my  Friends  here  are  so  apprehensive  for  me,  that  they  press 
me  much  to  remain  in  France,  and  three  of  them  have  offer'd 
me  an  Asylum  in  their  Habitations.  They  tell  me  I  am  here 
among  a  People  who  universally  esteem  and  love  me;  that 
my  Friends  at  home  are  diminish'd  by  Death  in  my  Absence; 
that  I  may  there  meet  with  Envy  and  its  consequent  Enmity 
which  here  I  am  perfectly  free  from;  this  supposing  I  live  to 
compleat  the  Voyage,  but  of  that  they  doubt.  The  Desire 
however  of  spending  the  little  Remainder  of  Life  with  my 
Family,  is  so  strong,  as  to  determine  me  to  try,  at  least,  whether 
I  can  bear  the  Motion  of  a  Ship.  If  not,  I  must  get  them  to 
set  me  on  shore  somewhere  in  the  Channel,  and  content  myself 
to  die  in  Europe. 

This  is  melancholy  enough,  but  the  wonderful  old  man 
weathered  out  the  voyage,  and  contrived  on  the  way 
to  write  three  elaborate  treatises  on  practical  subjects 
which,  good  as  they  are  of  their  kind,  the  general  reader 
would  gladly  exchange  for  the  addition  of  a  few  dozen 
pages  to  the  Autobiography.  In  his  last  years,  he  was  like 
the  mimosa  tree,  dying,  to  all  appearances,  one  year,  and 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  259 

the  next  throwing  out  fresh  verdurous  branches  from  his 
decaying  trunk. 

Among  the  writings  of  Franklin  are  also  letters  to 
Richard  Bache  alone.  The  first  is  dated  October  7,  1772, 
and  begins,  "Loving  Son."  But  loving  son  as  Bache 
was,  Franklin  was  too  indisposed  to  encourage  pecuniary 
laxity  in  a  son-in-law,  who  had  to  make  his  way  in  the 
world,  not  to  remind  him  that  there  remained  five  guineas 
unpaid,  which  he  had  had  of  him  just  on  going  away. 
"Send  it  in  a  Venture  for  Ben  to  Jamaica, "  he  said.  The 
next  letter  to  Bache  relates  to  the  hospitable  Post-office. 
Bache,  he  says,  will  have  heard,  before  it  got  to  hand, 
that  the  writer  had  been  displaced,  and  consequently 
would  have  it  no  longer  in  his  power  to  assist  him  in  his 
views  relating  to  the  Post-office;  "As  things  are,"  he 
remarked,  "I  would  not  wish  to  see  you  concern'd  in  it. 
For  I  conceive  that  the  Dismissing  me  merely  for  not  being 
corrupted  by  the  Office  to  betray  the  Interests  of  my 
Country,  will  make  it  some  Disgrace  among  us  to  hold 
such  an  Office." 

The  remainder  of  Franklin's  letters  to  Bache,  with  the 
exception  of  a  letter  introducing  to  him  Thomas  Paine, 
the  author  of  Common  Sense,  were  written  from  Passy. 
One  of  them  had  something  pungent  but  just  enough  to 
say  about  Lee  and  Izard  and  the  cabal  for  removing  Tem- 
ple. Sally  declared  on  one  occasion  that  she  hated  all 
South  Carolinians  from  B  (Bee,  a  member  of  Congress 
from  South  Carolina)  to  Izard.  This  letter  discloses  the 
fact  that  Ben  had  been  placed  at  school  at  Geneva  in 
11  the  old  thirteen  United  States  of  Switzerland,"  as  the 
writer  calls  them.  It  is  signed  "I  am  your  affectionate 
father."  Another  letter  indicates  that  Franklin  had  sent 
a  profile  of  the  growing  boy  to  his  parents,  so  that  they 
could  see  the  changes  which  he  had  undergone  in  the 
preceding  four  years.  This  letter  also  expresses  the 
willingness  of  the  grandfather  to  give  at  his  expense  to 


260       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

William,  Bache's  second  son,  the  best  education  that 
America  could  afford.  In  his  next  and  last  letter  to  Bache, 
Franklin  makes  these  comments  upon  Ben  which  not 
only  show  how  much  he  loved  him  but  how  quietly  his 
temperament  could  accept  even  such  a  disappointment 
as  his  failure  to  secure  the  merited  office  for  Temple. 

Benny  continues  well,  and  grows  amazingly.  He  is  a  very 
sensible  and  a  very  good  Lad,  and  I  love  him  much.  I  had 
Thoughts  of  bringing  him  up  under  his  Cousin,  and  fitting 
him  for  Public  Business,  thinking  he  might  be  of  Service  here- 
after to  his  Country;  but  being  now  convinc'd  that  Service 
is  no  Inheritance,  as  the  Proverb  says,  I  have  determin'd  to 
give  him  a  Trade  that  he  may  have  something  to  depend  on, 
and  not  be  oblig'd  to  ask  Favours  or  Offices  of  anybody. 
And  I  flatter  myself  he  will  make  his  way  good  in  the  World 
with  God's  Blessing.  He  has  already  begun  to  learn  the 
business  from  Masters  [a  printer  and  a  letter  founder]  who 
come  to  my  House,  and  is  very  diligent  in  working  and  quick 
in  learning. 

Two  letters  to  the  boy  himself  are  among  Franklin's 
published  writings.  The  first  is  couched  in  sweet,  simple 
terms,  suited  to  the  age  of  his  youthful  correspondent, 
and  the  second  is  interesting  only  as  evidencing  how 
closely  the  grandfather  scanned  the  drawings  and  hand- 
writing of  his  grandson,  and  as  emphasizing  the  importance 
that  he  always  attached  to  arithmetic  and  accounts  as 
elements  of  an  useful  education. 

Sally's  reply  to  her  father's  rebuke,  on  account  of  the 
modish  vanities,  that  she  asked  of  him,  was  quite  spirited. 

How  could  my  dear  papa  [she  said]  give  me  so  severe  a 
reprimand  for  wishing  a  little  finery.  He  would  not,  I  am 
sure,  if  he  knew  how  much  I  have  felt  it.  Last  winter  (in 
consequence  of  the  surrender  of  General  Burgoyne)  was  a 
season  of  triumph  to  the  Whigs,  and  they  spent  it  gayly;  you 
would  not  have  had  me,  I  am  sure,  stay  away  from  the  Embas- 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  261 

sadors'  or  Gerard's  entertainments,  nor  when  I  was  invited  to 
spend  a  day  with  General  Washington  and  his  lady ;  and  you 
would  have  been  the  last  person,  I  am  sure,  to  have  wished  to 
see  me  dressed  with  singularity :  Though  I  never  loved  dress 
so  much  as  to  wish  to  be  particularly  fine,  yet  I  never  will  go 
out  when  I  cannot  appear  so  as  to  do  credit  to  my  family 
and  husband. 

Apparently,  Sally  was  not  always  so  unsuccessful  as 
she  was  on  this  occasion  in  her  efforts  to  secure  some- 
thing to  wear,  suitable  to  her  situation  as  the  daughter 
of  a  very  distinguished  citizen  of  Philadelphia  in  easy 
circumstances.  Nothing  she  once  wrote  to  her  father 
was  ever  more  admired  than  her  new  gown.  It  is  obvious, 
however,  that  Franklin  was  resolved  that  his  daughter  at 
least  should  heed  and  profit  by  what  Father  Abraham  had 
to  say  in  his  discourse  about  the  effect  of  silks,  satins, 
scarlet  and  velvets  in  putting  out  the  kitchen  fire.  In 
his  will,  he  bequeathed  to  her  the  picture  of  Louis  XV., 
given  to  him  by  the  King,  which  was  set  with  four  hun- 
dred and  eight  diamonds,  "requesting,  however,  that  she 
would  not  form  any  of  those  diamonds  into  ornaments 
either  for  herself  or  daughters,  and  thereby  introduce 
or  countenance  the  expensive,  vain,  and  useless  fashion 
of  wearing  jewels  in  this  country. ' '  The  outer  circle  of  the 
diamonds  was  sold  by  Sally,  and  on  the  proceeds  she  and 
her  husband  made  the  tour  of  Europe. 

When  Franklin  returned  from  his  second  mission,  it 
was  to  reside  with  his  daughter  and  son-in-law  in  the  new 
house  with  the  kitchen,  dining-room  and  blue  chamber 
mentioned  in  his  letters  to  Deborah.  Cohabitation  with 
the  Baches  proved  so  agreeable  that  he  wrote  Polly  Hew- 
son  that  he  was  delighted  with  his  little  family.  "Will," 
he  told  Temple,  "has  got  a  little  Gun,  marches  with  it, 
and  whistles  at  the  same  time  by  way  of  Fife."  There 
are  also  some  amusing  observations  in  a  later  letter  of  his 
to  Temple  on  a  letter  written  by  Ben  to  Temple,  when 


262       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Temple  was  at  the  house  of  his  Tory  father  in  New  Jersey, 
but  which  was  never  sent. 

It  was  thought  [said  Franklin]  to  be  too  full  of  Pot  hooks 
&  Hangers,  and  so  unintelligible  by  the  dividing  Words  in 
the  Middle  and  joining  Ends  of  some  to  Beginnings  of  others, 
that  if  it  had  fallen  into  the  Hands  of  some  Committee  it 
might  have  given  them  too  much  Trouble  to  decypher  it,  on 
a  Suspicion  of  its  containing  Treason,  especially  as  directed 
to  a  Tory  House. 

An  earlier  letter  from  Franklin  to  Polly  Hewson  about 
Ben  is  marked  by  the  same  playful  spirit.  "Ben,"  the 
grandfather  said,  "when  I  delivered  him  your  Blessing, 
inquired  the  Age  of  Elizabeth  [Mrs.  Hewson's  daughter] 
and  thought  her  yet  too  young  for  him;  but,  as  he  made  no 
other  Objection,  and  that  will  lessen  every  day,  I  have 
only  to  wish  being  alive  to  dance  with  your  Mother  at  the 
Wedding." 

After  his  arrival  in  America,  Franklin  was  appointed 
Postmaster- General  of  the  Colonies  by  Congress,  and  this 
appointment  gave  Richard  Bache  another  opportunity  to 
solicit  an  office  from  his  father-in-law.  With  his  usual 
unfaltering  nepotism,  Franklin  appointed  him  Deputy 
Postmaster-General,  but  subsequently  Congress  removed 
him,  and  there  was  nothing  for  him  to  do  but  to  court 
fortune  in  business  again,  with  such  aid  as  Franklin  could 
give  him  in  mercantile  circles  in  France.  In  the  latter 
years  of  Franklin's  life,  there  was  a  very  general  feeling 
that  he  had  made  public  office  too  much  of  a  family 
perquisite,  and  this  feeling  weakened  Richard  Bache's 
tenure  on  the  Post  Office,  and  helped  to  frustrate  all 
Franklin's  plans  for  the  public  preferment  of  Temple 
and  Benjamin  Franklin  Bache.  Much  as  Washington 
admired  Franklin  the  latter  was  unable  to  obtain  even 
by  the  most  assiduous  efforts  an  office  under  his  ad- 
ministration for  either  of  them. 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  263 

When  Franklin's  ship  approached  Philadelphia  on  his 
return  from  Paris,  it  was  his  son-in-law  who  put  off  in  a 
boat  to  bring  him  and  his  grandsons  ashore,  and,  when  he 
landed  at  Market  Street  wharf,  he  was  received  by  a  crowd 
of  people  with  huzzas  and  accompanied  with  acclamations 
quite  to  his  door. 

After  his  return  he  again  took  up  his  residence  with  the 
Baches  in  the  same  house  as  before,  and  there  is  but  little 
more  to  say  about  the  members  of  the  Bache  family. 
There  are,  however,  some  complimentary  things  worth 
recalling  that  were  said  of  Sally  by  some  of  her  French 
contemporaries. 

She  [Marbois  wrote  to  Franklin  in  1781]  passed  a  part 
of  last  year  in  exertions  to  rouse  the  zeal  of  the  Pennsylvania 
ladies;  and  she  made  on  this  occasion  such  a  happy  use  of 
the  eloquence  which  you  know  she  possesses,  that  a  large  part 
of  the  American  army  was  provided  with  shirts,  bought 
with  their  money  or  made  by  their  hands.  If  there  are  in 
Europe  [he  also  said]  any  women  who  need  a  model  of  attach- 
ment to  domestic  duties  and  love  for  their  country,  Mrs. 
Bache  may  be  pointed  out  to  them  as  such. 

The  Marquis  de  Chastellux  tells  us  that  she  was  "simple 
in  her  manners,"  and  "like  her  respectable  father,  she 
possesses  his  benevolence." 

Of  course,  from  the  letters  of  Franklin  himself  we  obtain 
some  insight  into  the  domestic  conditions  by  which  he 
was  surrounded  in  his  home  during  the  last  stages  of  his 
existence.  To  John  Jay  and  Mrs.  Jay  he  wrote,  shortly 
after  his  arrival  in  America,  that  he  was  then  in  the  bosom 
of  his  family,  and  found  four  new  little  prattlers,  who  clung 
about  the  knees  of  their  grandpapa,  and  afforded  him 
great  pleasure.  It  is  a  peaceful  slope,  though  near  the 
foot  of  the  hill,  which  is  presented  to  our  eyes  in  these 
words  written  by  him  to  Jan  Ingenhousz : 


264        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Except  that  I  am  too  much  encumber'd  with  Business, 
I  find  myself  happily  situated  here,  among  my  numerous 
Friends,  plac'd  at  the  Head  of  my  Country  by  its  unanimous 
Voice,  in  the  Bosom  of  my  Family,  my  Offspring  to  wait 
on  me  and  nurse  me,  in  a  House  I  built  23  Years  since  to 
my  Mind. 

A  still  later  letter,  in  which  he  speaks  of  Sally,  tends  to 
support  the  idea  that  it  was  not  his  but  William  Franklin's 
fault  that  the  reconciliation,  which  was  supposed  to  have 
taken  place  between  father  and  son  abroad,  was  not 
sufficiently  complete  to  repress  the  acrid  reference  made  by 
Franklin  in  his  will  to  the  fact  that  his  son  had  been  a 
Loyalist. 

I  too  [he  wrote  to  his  friend,  Mather  Byles]  have  a  Daugh- 
ter, who  lives  with  me  and  is  the  Comfort  of  my  declining 
Years,  while  my  Son  is  estrang'd  from  me  by  the  Part  he 
took  in  the  late  War,  and  keeps  aloof,  residing  in  England, 
whose  Cause  he  espoused;  whereby  the  old  Proverb  is  ex- 
emplified; 

"My  Son  is  my  Son  till  he  take  him  a  Wife; 
But  my  Daughter's  my  Daughter  all  Days  of  her  Life.,, 

We  are  the  quicker  to  place  the  blame  for  the  recrudes- 
cence of  the  former  bitterness  upon  William  Franklin 
because  the  life  of  Franklin  is  full  of  proofs  that  he  had  a 
truly  forgiving  disposition. x    It  is  a  fact,  however,  that  his 

1  The  entire  conduct  of  Franklin  towards  his  son  after  the  dismissal  of 
the  father  from  office  by  the  British  Government  seems  to  have  been  thor- 
oughly considerate  and  decorous.  His  wish  that  William  Franklin  would 
resign  his  office  as  Governor  of  New  Jersey,  which  he  could  not  hold  with- 
out pecuniary  loss  to  his  father,  and  without  apparent  insensibility  to  the 
indignity  to  which  his  father  had  been  subjected,  was  delicately  intimated 
only.  Even  after  William  Franklin  became  a  prisoner  in  Connecticut  in 
consequence  of  his  disloyalty  to  the  American  cause,  Franklin,  while 
giving  Temple  some  very  good  practical  reasons  why  he  could  not  consent 
that  he  should  be  the  bearer  of  a  letter  from  Mrs.  William  Franklin  to  her 
husband,  takes  care  to  tell  Temple  that  he  does  not  blame  his  desire  of 
seeing  a  father  that  he  had  so  much  reason  to  love.     At  this  time  he  also 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  265 

unrelenting  antipathy  to  Loyalists  is  the  one  thing  in  his 
career  unworthy  of  a  sense  of  justice  and  breadth  of 
intellectual  charity,  otherwise  well-nigh  perfect.  We 
cannot  but  regret  that  anything  should  have  shaken 
the  poise  of  a  character  which  Lecky  has  truthfully  termed 
"one  of  the  calmest  and  best  balanced  of  human  charac- 
ters." But  it  is  not  given  even  to  a  Franklin  to  see  things 
in  their  ordinary  colors  through  a  blood-red  mist,  and 
quite  as  true  as  any  saying  that  Poor  Richard  ever  con- 
ceived or  borrowed  is  Acerrima  proximorum  odia. 

In  still  another  letter,  one  to  Madame  Brillon,  he  says, 
"A  dutiful  and  affectionate  Daughter,  with  her  Husband 
and  Six  Children  compose  my  Family.  The  Children  are 
all  promising,  and  even  the  youngest,  who  is  but  four 
Years  old,  contributes  to  my  Amusement";  and,  about  a 
year  and  a  half  before  his  death,  he  records  in  a  letter  to 
Elizabeth  Partridge,  the  "Addition  of  a  little  good-natured 
Girl,  whom  I  begin  to  love  as  well  as  the  rest."  In  yet 
another  letter,  this  time  to  his  friend,  Alexander  Small, 
after  the  birth  of  this  little  girl,  there  is  a  revelation  of  the 
domestic  quietude  in  which  his  long  life  closed.  '  ■  I  have, " 
he  said,  "seven  promising  grandchildren  by  my  daughter, 
who  play  with  and  amuse  me,  and  she  is  a  kind  attentive 
nurse  to  me  when  I  am  at  any  time  indisposed;  so  that  I 

relieved  with  a  gift  of  money  the  immediate  necessities  of  Mrs.  William 
Franklin.  The  temper  of  his  letters  to  Temple,  when  Temple  went  over 
to  England  from  France,  at  his  instance,  to  pay  his  duty  to  William  Frank- 
lin, was  that  of  settled  reconciliation  with  his  son.  "Give  my  Love  to 
your  Father,"  is  a  message  in  one  of  these  letters.  When  he  touched  at 
Southampton  on  his  return  from  his  French  mission,  William  Franklin, 
among  others,  was  there  to  greet  him.  In  the  succeeding  year  we  find 
Franklin  asking  Andrew  Strahan  to  send  him  a  volume  and  to  present  his 
account  for  it  to  his  son.  But  on  one  occasion  during  the  last  twelve 
months  of  his  life,  he  speaks  of  William  no  longer  as  "my  son"  but  as 
"William  Franklin."  On  the  whole,  it  would  appear  that  it  was  not  so 
much  the  original  defection  of  the  son  from  the  American  cause  as  the 
fact  that  he  kept  aloof  from  the  father,  after  the  return  of  the  father  from 
France,  which  was  responsible  for  the  asperity  with  which  the  latter  refers 
in  his  will  to  the  political  course  of  William  Franklin  during  the  Revolution. 


266       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

pass  my  time  as  agreeably  as  at  my  age  a  man  may  well 
expect,  and  have  little  to  wish  for,  except  a  more  easy  exit 
than  my  malady  seems  to  threaten.''  By  this  time, 
Benjamin  Franklin  Bache  was  old  enough  to  be  turning 
to  the  practical  purposes  of  self-support  the  knowledge  of 
printing  which  he  had  acquired  in  France.  "I  am  too  old 
to  follow  printing  again  myself, "  wrote  Franklin  to  Mrs. 
Catherine  Greene,  "but,  loving  the  business,  I  have 
brought  up  my  grandson  Benjamin  to  it,  and  have  built 
and  furnished  a  printing-house  for  him,  which  he  now 
manages  under  my  eye."  The  type  used  by  Benjamin 
in  his  business  were  those  which  his  grandfather  had  cast 
with  the  aid  of  his  servants  in  Paris,  and  had  employed 
in  printing  the  brilliant  little  productions  penned  by  his 
friends  and  himself,  which  created  so  much  merriment  in 
the  salon  of  Madame  Helvetius. 

The  seven  children  of  Sarah  Bache  were  Benjamin 
Franklin  Bache,  who  married  Margaret  Marcoe,  William 
Hartman  Bache,  who  married  Catharine  Wistar,  Eliza 
Franklin  Bache,  who  married  John  Edward  Harwood, 
Louis  Bache,  who  married  first  Mary  Ann  Swift,  and 
then  Esther  Egee,  Deborah  Bache,  who  married  William 
J.  Duane,  Richard  Bache,  who  married  Sophia  B.  Dallas,  a 
daughter  of  Alexander  J.  Dallas,  and  Sarah  Bache,  who 
married  Thomas  Sargeant. 

Besides  being  a  good  husband,  father  and  grandfather, 
Franklin  was  also  a  good  son.  His  father,  Josiah,  had 
seven  children  by  his  first  wife,  Anne,  and  ten  by  his 
second,  Abiah  Folger,  Franklin's  mother.  Of  this  swarm, 
we  are  told  by  the  Autobiography  that  Franklin  could  re- 
member thirteen  children  sitting  at  one  time  at  his  father's 
table,  who  all  grew  up  to  be  men  and  women,  and  married. 
Franklin  himself  was  the  youngest  son,  and  the  youngest 
child  but  two.  In  few  subjects  was  his  adult  interest 
keener  than  in  that  of  population,  and  the  circumstances 
of  his  early  life  were  certainly  calculated  to  stimulate  it 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  267 

into  a  high  degree  of  precocious  activity.  It  is  a  pleasing 
portrait  that  he  paints  of  his  father  for  us  in  the  Auto- 
biography. After  describing  his  physique  in  the  terms 
already  quoted  by  us,  Franklin  says: 

He  was  ingenious,  could  draw  prettily,  was  skilled  a  little 
in  music,  and  had  a  clear  pleasing  voice,  so  that  when  he 
played  psalm  tunes  on  his  violin  and  sung  withal,  as  he  some- 
times did  in  an  evening  after  the  business  of  the  day  was  over, 
it  was  extremely  agreeable  to  hear.  He  had  a  mechanical 
genius  too,  and,  on  occasion,  was  very  handy  in  the  use  of 
other  tradesman's  tools;  but  his  great  excellence  lay  in  a 
sound  understanding  and  solid  judgment  in  prudential  matters, 
both  in  private  and  publick  affairs.  In  the  latter,  indeed,  he 
was  never  employed,  the  numerous  family  he  had  to  educate 
and  the  straitness  of  his  circumstances  keeping  him  close 
to  his  trade ;  but  I  remember  well  his  being  frequently  visited 
by  leading  people,  who  consulted  him  for  his  opinion  in  affairs 
of  the  town  or  of  the  church  he  belonged  to,  and  showed  a 
good  deal  of  respect  for  his  judgment  and  advice :  he  was  also 
much  consulted  by  private  persons  about  their  affairs  when  any 
difficulty  occurred,  and  frequently  chosen  an  arbitrator  be- 
tween contending  parties.  At  his  table  he  liked  to  have,  as 
often  as  he  could,  some  sensible  friend  or  neighbour  to  con- 
verse with,  and  always  took  care  to  start  some  ingenious  or 
useful  topic  for  discourse,  which  might  tend  to  improve  the 
minds  of  his  children.  By  this  means  he  turned  our  attention 
to  what  was  good,  just,  and  prudent  in  the  conduct  of  life;  and 
little  or  no  notice  was  ever  taken  of  what  related  to  the  victuals 
on  the  table,  whether  it  was  well  or  ill-dressed,  in  or  out  of 
season,  of  good  or  bad  flavour,  preferable  or  inferior  to  this 
or  that  other  thing  of  the  kind,  so  that  I  was  bro't  up  in  such 
a  perfect  inattention  to  those  matters  as  to  be  quite  indifferent 
what  kind  of  food  was  set  before  me,  and  so  unobservant  of  it, 
that  to  this  day  if  I  am  asked  I  can  scarce  tell  a  few  hours  after 
dinner  what  I  dined  upon.  This  has  been  a  convenience  to 
me  in  travelling,  where  my  companions  have  been  sometimes 
very  unhappy  for  want  of  a  suitable  gratification  of  their 
more  delicate,  because  better  instructed,  tastes  and  appetites. 


268       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

A  story  is  credited  to  Josiah  by  Franklin  which  is 
quite  in  the  manner  of  the  son.  When  Charles  the  First 
ordered  his  proclamation  authorizing  sports  on  Sunday  to 
be  read  in  all  churches,  many  clergymen  complied,  some 
refused  and  others  hurried  it  through  as  indistinctly  as 
possible.  But  a  certain  clergyman  to  the  surprise  of  his 
congregation  read  it  distinctly.  He  followed  the  reading, 
however,  with  the  Fourth  Commandment,  Remember  to 
keep  holy  the  Sabbath  Day,  and  then  said,  "Brethren,  I 
have  laid  before  you  the  Command  of  your  King,  and 
the  Commandment  of  your  God.  I  leave  it  to  yourselves 
to  judge  which  of  the  two  ought  rather  to  be  observed." 

It  is  to  be  wished  that  Franklin  could  have  given  us 
in  the  Autobiography  a  companion  portrait  of  his  mother 
also;  but  this  he  has  not  done.  He  tells  us  little  more 
than  that  she  was  the  daughter  of  Peter  Folger,  a  resident 
of  Nantucket,  had,  like  her  husband,  an  excellent  con- 
stitution, and  suckled  all  her  ten  children — a  point  of 
capital  importance  with  her  son.  Franklin  further  tells 
us  that  he  never  knew  either  his  father  or  his  mother  to 
have  any  sickness  but  that  of  which  they  died,  he  at  eighty- 
nine  and  she  at  eighty-five.  They  were  both  buried  in 
Boston,  and  rested  for  many  years  under  a  monument, 
erected  over  their  graves  by  Franklin,  with  a  happy 
inscription  from  his  pen,  until  this  monument,  having 
fallen  into  a  state  of  dilapidation,  was  replaced  in  1827 
by'  a  more  durable  one,  erected  by  a  number  of  citizens 
of  Boston,  who  were  desirous,  as  their  supplementary 
inscription  states,  of  reminding  succeeding  generations 
that  he  was  born  in  Boston.  In  his  inscription,  Franklin, 
true  to  his  ideals,  states  with  pride  that  Josiah  and  Abiah 
lived  lovingly  together  in  wedlock  fifty-five  years,  and, 
without  an  estate,  or  any  gainful  employment,  by  constant 
labor  and  industry,  with  God's  blessing,  maintained  a 
large  family  comfortably,  and  brought  up  thirteen  children 
and  seven  grandchildren  reputably.     In  the  light  of  the 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  269 

altered  domestic  standards  of  the  present  time,  it  requires 
some  little  effort,  after  reading  these  words,  to  accept 
the  subsequent  statement  in  the  inscription  that  Josiah 
was  not  only  a  pious  but  a  "prudent"  man. 

Peter  Folger  was  evidently  regarded  by  Franklin  with 
distinct  favor  because  of  his  tolerant  characteristics. 
The  flower  of  tolerance  did  not  often  lift  up  its  head  in  the 
frigid  air  of  what  some  one  has  wittily  styled  the  "ice 
age"  of  New  England  history.  In  the  Autobiography, 
Franklin  speaks  of  Folger  as  one  of  the  first  settlers  of  New 
England,  of  whom  honourable  mention  is  made  by  Cotton 
Mather,  in  his  church  history  of  that  country,  entitled 
Magnolia  Christi  Americana,  as  "a  godly,  learned  English- 
man, "  if  he  remembers  the  words  rightly. 

I  have  heard  [the  Autobiography  goes  on]  that  he  wrote 
sundry  small  occasional  pieces,  but  only  one  of  them  was 
printed,  which  I  saw  now  many  years  since.  It  was  written 
in  1675,  in  the  home-spun  verse  of  that  time  and  people,  and 
addressed  to  those  then  concerned  in  the  government  there. 
It  was  in  favour  of  liberty  of  conscience,  and  in  behalf  of  the 
Baptists,  Quakers,  and  other  sectaries  that  had  been  under 
persecution,  ascribing  the  Indian  Wars,  and  other  distresses 
that  had  befallen  the  country,  to  that  persecution,  as  so  many 
judgments  of  God  to  punish  so  heinous  an  offense,  and  exhort- 
ing a  repeal  of  those  uncharitable  laws.  The  whole  appeared 
to  me  as  written  with  a  good  deal  of  decent  plainness  and 
manly  freedom.  The  six  concluding  lines  I  remember,  though 
I  have  forgotten  the  two  first  of  the  stanza;  but  the  purport 
of  them  was,  that  his  censures  proceeded  from  good-will,  and, 
therefore,  he  would  be  known  to  be  the  author, 

"  Because  to  be  a  libeller  (says  he) 
I  hate  it  with  my  heart; 
From  Sherburne  town,  where  now  I  dwell, 
My  name  I  do  put  here ; 
Without  offense  your  real  friend, 
It  is  Peter  Folgier." 


270       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Verses  like  these,  it  is  to  be  feared,  call  for  somewhat 
the  same  spirit  of  toleration  as  that  which  Folger  himself 
exhibited  towards  the  Baptists  and  Quakers,  but  they  were 
well  worthy  of  remembrance,  at  any  rate,  for  the  brave 
and  enlightened  spirit  by  which  they  were  informed. x 

Peter  Folger 's  plainness  of  speech  seems  to  have  been 
a  family  characteristic.  In  a  letter  to  his  sister  Jane, 
written  in  his  last  years,  Franklin  told  her  frankly  that,  if 
there  had  been  a  misunderstanding  between  her  and  one 
of  her  relations,  he  should  have  concluded  that  it  was  her 
fault,  "for  I  think  our  Family,"  he  said,  "were  always 
subject  to  being  a  little  Miffy."  Then,  as  was  his  habit, 
when  he  had  discharged  the  disagreeable  duty  of  saying 
something  slightly  censorious,  he  brings  the  stress  of  his 
good  nature  to  bear  upon  his  pen  just  a  little  harder  than 
usual. 

By  the  way  [he  asked]  is  our  Relationship  in  Nantucket 
worn-out?  I  have  met  with  none  from  thence  of  late  years, 
who  were  disposed  to  be  acquainted  with  me,  except  Captain 
Timothy  Foulger.  They  are  wonderfully  shy.  But  I  admire 
their  honest  plainness  of  Speech.  About  a  year  ago  I  invited 
two  of  them  to  dine  with  me.  Their  answer  was,  that  they 
would,  if  they  could  not  do  better.  I  suppose  they  did  better; 
for  I  never  saw  them  afterwards,  and  so  had  no  Opportunity 
of  showing  my  Miff,  if  I  had  one. 

The  letters  from  Franklin  to  his  father  and  mother  are 
few  in  number  but  not  lacking  in  interest.  To  the  one  to 
Josiah,  in  which  he  made  the  heinous  confession  that  his 
mind  was  not  very  clear  as  to  the  difference  between 
Arianism  and  Arminianism,  we  have  already  adverted. 
In  this  letter,  besides  the  burden  of  defending  his  religious 

1  Altogether  Peter  Folger  must  have  been  a  man  of  sterling  sense  and 
character.  He  was  one  of  the  five  Commissioners  appointed  to  survey 
and  measure  the  land  on  the  Island  of  Nantucket,  and  in  the  order  of 
appointment  the  following  provision  was  inserted:  "Whatsoever  shall 
be  done  by  them,  or  any  three  of  them,  Peter  Folger  being  one,  shall  be  ac- 
counted legal  and  valid." 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  271 

orthodoxy  before  a  very  stern  tribunal,  he  had  to  assume 
the  burden  of  satisfying  his  good  mother  that  there  was 
nothing  odious  in  the  principles  and  practices  of  the 
Freemasons;  and  this  in  the  face  of  the  fact  that  one  of 
their  rules  was  not  to  admit  women  into  their  lodges. 
Another  letter,  which  begins  "Honoured  Father  and 
Mother, "  and  ends,  "Your  affectionate  and  dutiful  son,  " 
discourses  in  quite  a  learned  fashion  upon  various  remedies 
that  might  take  the  place  of  the  ebbing  vis  medicatrix 
natures  which  had  served  the  aged  pair  so  well  for  such  a 
long  span  of  years;  but  the  son  is  careful  to  say  that  he 
hopes  that  his  parents  will  consider  his  advice  upon  such 
subjects  only  as  marks  of  his  good  will  and  put  no  more 
of  it  in  practice  than  should  happen  to  agree  with  their 
doctor's  directions.  Another  letter,  beginning  "Hon- 
oured Mother, "  deals  with  topics  of  a  very  different 
nature  from  either  religious  dogmas  or  the  sapo  phil- 
osophorum  of  his  medicinal  communication.  Cousin 
Josiah  Davenport  and  his  spouse  had  arrived  at  Phil- 
adelphia hearty  and  well.  He  had  met  them  the  evening 
before  at  Trenton,  thirty  miles  off,  and  had  accompanied 
them  to  town.  How  gracious,  we  may  remark,  was  the 
old  Pennsylvania  hospitality  which  sometimes  greeted  the 
coming  guest  thirty  miles  away,  and,  instead  of  speeding 
the  parting  guest,  sometimes  followed  him  for  as  great  a 
distance  when  he  was  going ! 

They  [Franklin  continued]  went  into  their  own  house  on 
Monday,  and  I  believe  will  do  very  well,  for  he  seems  bent  on 
industry,  and  she  appears  a  discreet,  notable  young  woman. 
My  wife  has  been  to  see  them  every  day,  calling  in  as  she 
passes  by;  and  I  suspect  has  fallen  in  love  with  our  new  cousin; 
for  she  entertains  me  a  deal,  when  she  comes  home,  with  what 
Cousin  Sally  does,  and  what  Cousin  Sally  says,  what  a  good 
contriver  she  is,  and  the  like. 

In  his  next  letter  to  Abiah,  Franklin  sends  her  one  of  his 
far-famed  almanacs,  and  then  adds,  "I  send  you  also  a 


272       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

moidore  enclosed,  which  please  to  accept  towards  chaise 
hire,  that  you  may  ride  warm  to  meetings  this  winter." 
From  the  moidore  he  passes  to  infantile  complaints  which 
it  must  have  pained  the  heart  of  the  mother  of  ten  children 
to  hear  had  carried  off  many  children  in  Philadelphia  that 
summer,  and  then,  after  just  a  word  about  Cousin  Coleman 
and  two  of  the  outspoken  Folgers,  he  has  this  to  say  about 
Sally:  "Your  granddaughter  is  the  greatest  lover  of 
her  book  and  school,  of  any  child  I  ever  knew,  and  is  very 
dutiful  to  her  mistress  as  well  as  to  us." 

In  one  of  her  letters  to  her  son  Abiah  tells  him  that  she 
is  very  weak  and  short-breathed,  so  that  she  can't  sit  up 
to  write  much,  although  she  sleeps  well  at  night,  and  her 
cough  is  better,  and  she  has  a  pretty  good  stomach  to  her 
victuals.  In  the  same  letter,  she  also  says :  ' '  Pray  excuse 
my  bad  writing  and  inditing,  for  all  tell  me  I  am  too  old 
to  write  letters."  No  courtier  could  have  framed  a  more 
graceful  response  to  this  appeal,  let  alone  the  sincerity 
of  filial  respect  and  love. 

We  received  your  kind  Letter  of  the  2d  Instant  [wrote 
Franklin]  and  we  are  glad  to  hear  you  still  enjoy  such  a 
Measure  of  Health,  notwithstanding  your  great  Age.  We 
read  your  Writing  very  easily.  I  never  met  with  a  Word 
in  your  Letters  but  what  I  could  readily  understand;  for, 
tho'  the  Hand  is  not  always  the  best,  the  Sense  makes  every- 
thing plain. 

The  numerous  family  details  in  this  letter  render  it 
the  most  interesting  of  Franklin's  letters  to  his  mother. 
They  had  concluded,  he  said,  to  sell  at  the  first  good 
opportunity  a  negro  slave  and  his  wife,  who  appear  to 
have  been  guilty  of  some  thievery,  "for  we  do  not  like 
Negro  Servants,"  he  declared.  For  the  sake  of  human 
consistency,  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  pair  were  sold  long 
before  he  became  the  President  of  the  Pennsylvania 
Society  for  the  Abolition  of  Slavery,  and  assailed  the 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  273 

African  slave  trade  with  such  telling  raillery.  But,  to 
sell  all  one's  own  negroes,  and  then  to  enter  upon  a  per- 
fervid  course  of  agitation  for  the  enfranchisement  of  one's 
neighbor's  negroes,  without  compensation,  was  a  thing 
of  not  uncommon  occurrence  in  American  history,  so 
long  as  the  institution  of  slavery  lasted.  Will  (William 
Franklin),  he  tells  Abiah,  had  acquired  a  habit  of  idleness 
on  the  expedition  against  Canada,  but  had  begun  of  late 
to  apply  himself  to  business,  and  he  hoped  would  become 
an  industrious  man.  "He  imagin'd  his  Father,"  said 
Franklin,  "had  got  enough  for  him,  but  I  have  assured 
him  that  I  intend  to  spend  what  little  I  have  myself,  if  it 
please  God  that  I  live  long  enough;  and,  as  he  by  no  means 
wants  Sense,  he  can  see  by  my  going  on,  that  I  am  like  to 
be  as  good  as  my  Word." 

Sally  [he  says]  grows  a  fine  Girl,  and  is  extremely  industri- 
ous with  her  Needle,  and  delights  in  her  Book.  She  is  of  a 
most  affectionate  Temper,  and  perfectly  dutiful  and  obliging 
to  her  Parents,  and  to  all.  Perhaps  I  flatter  myself  too  much, 
but  I  have  Hopes  that  she  will  prove  an  ingenious,  sensible, 
notable,  and  worthy  Woman,  like  her  Aunt  Jenny.  She  goes 
now  to  the  Dancing-School. 

After  Franklin  decamped  from  Boston  as  a  boy,  he 
rarely  again  saw  his  parents,  but,  down  to  the  days  of 
their  respective  deaths,  he  kept  in  touch  with  them  im- 
mediately, through  his  own  correspondence  with  them, 
and  also  mediately  through  his  correspondence  with  his 
sister  Jane.  "You  have  mentioned  nothing  in  your 
letter  of  our  dear  parents,"  he  observes  in  one  of  his 
letters  to  her.  "Dear  Sister,  I  love  you  tenderly  for 
your  care  of  our  father  in  his  sickness, "  he  writes  to  her 
on  another  occasion.  And,  finally,  when  Abiah,  "home 
had  gone  and  ta'en  her  wages, "  he  sent  these  feeling  words 
to  this  same  sister  and  her  husband : 

VOL.  I — 18 


274       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Dear  Brother  and  Sister,  I  received  yours  with  the  affecting 
news  of  our  dear  good  mother's  death.  I  thank  you  for 
your  long  continued  care  of  her  in  her  old  age  and  sickness. 
Our  distance  made  it  impracticable  for  us  to  attend  her, 
but  you  have  supplied  all.  She  has  lived  a  good  life,  as 
well  as  a  long  one,  and  is  happy. 

Josiah  left  an  estate  valued  at  twenty-four  hundred 
dollars.  Some  years  after  his  death,  when  Franklin 
happened  to  be  in  Boston,  an  old  man  produced  a  bond, 
executed  by  the  father  for  about  fifteen  or  seventeen 
pounds,  and  asked  the  son  to  pay  it.  This  Franklin 
declined  to  do,  taking  the  position  that,  as  he  had  never 
received  any  share  of  his  father's  estate,  he  did  not  think 
himself  obliged  to  pay  any  of  the  debts  due  by  it.  An- 
other reason,  as  he  afterwards  stated  in  a  letter  to  his 
sister  Jane,  in  which  the  incident  was  mentioned,  was 
that  he  considered  the  matter  one  rather  for  the  attention 
of  his  brother  John,  the  administrator  of  his  father,  than 
himself.  But,  in  this  same  letter,  nevertheless,  he  sent 
these  instructions  to  Jane:  "If  you  know  that  Person,  I 
wish  you  would  now,  out  of  Hall's  Money  (a  sum  that 
was  to  be  collected  for  him  and  to  be  given  to  her)  pay 
that  Debt;  for  I  remember  his  Mildness  on  the  Occasion 
with  some  Regard."  A  soft  answer,  we  know,  tends  to 
turn  away  wrath,  but  it  is  not  often,  we  imagine,  that 
mildness  proves  such  an  effective  policy  for  the  collection 
of  a  stale  debt. 

"Dear  kindred  blood!  How  I  do  love  you  all!"  the 
exclamation  of  Daniel  Webster,  might  as  well  have  issued 
from  the  great,  loving  heart  of  Franklin.  Like  the 
brethren  of  Joseph,  the  son  of  Jacob,  pretty  much  all  of 
his  contemporary  relations  came  to  share  in  one  way  or 
another  in  the  good  fortune  of  the  only  prosperous  member 
of  the  family.  Franklin  was  too  young  to  have  ever  met 
the  two  brothers  of  his  father,  who  lived  and  died  in 
England — John,  the  Banbury  dyer,  with  whom  Franklin's 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  275 

paternal  grandfather,  Thomas  resided  in  his  old  age, 
and  with  whom  Franklin's  father  served  an  apprentice- 
ship, and  Thomas,  the  Ecton  forerunner  of  Franklin 
himself,  whom  we  have  already  mentioned.  But  his 
paternal  uncle,  Benjamin,  who  followed  Franklin's  father 
to  New  England,  and  lived  in  the  same  house  with  him 
for  some  years,  Franklin  did  know,  and  brings  before  us 
quite  clearly  in  the  Autobiography.  He  was  bred  a  silk 
dyer  in  England,  was  an  ingenious  and  very  pious  man, 
we  are  assured  by  his  nephew,  and  died  at  a  great  age. 
It  was  to  the  warm  affection  that  existed  between  this 
uncle,  whose  grandson,  Samuel  Franklin,  was  one  of 
Franklin's  correspondents,  and  Franklin's  father  that 
Franklin  owed  his  Christian  name.  Besides  being  a  dyer, 
a  great  attender  of  sermons  of  the  best  preachers,  "which 
he  took  down  in  his  shorthand,"  he  was,  the  Auto- 
biography states,  a  poet,  and  "also  much  of  a  politician; 
too  much,  perhaps,  for  his  station." 

In  his  agreeable  life  of  Franklin,  Parton  has  this  to  say 
of  the  uncle's  poetry  books. 

The  poetry  books  of  Uncle  Benjamin,  which  are  still  in 
perfect  preservation,  though  it  is  a  hundred  and  eighty  years 
since  he  bought  the  first  of  them,  are  neatly  written  and 
carefully  indexed.  Many  of  the  pieces  are  acrostics,  and 
several  are  curiously  shaped  on  the  page-dwindling  or  ex- 
panding in  various  forms,  according  to  the  quaint  fancy  of 
the  poet. 

# 
No  true  poet,  of  course,  ever  had  the  patience  to  index 

his  poems,  and  the  best  that  can  be  said  of  the  uncle  as  a 

poet  is  that,  though  he  did  not  reach  even  the  lowest 

slopes  of  Parnassus,  he  attained  a  point  distinctly  nearer 

to  its  base  than  the  nephew  ever  did.     Every  family 

event  seems  to  have  been  a  peg  for  him  to  hang  a  verse 

upon,   and  among  his  lines  are  these  sent   across  the 

Atlantic  in  return  for  something  from  the  pen  of  his 


276       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

nephew  who  was  at  that  time  about  seven  years  of 
age: 

"  'Tis  time  for  me  to  throw  aside  my  pen, 
When  hanging  sleeves  read,  write,  and  rhyme  like  men, 
This  forward  spring  foretells  a  plenteous  crop ; 
For,  if  the  bud  bear  grain,  what  will  the  top! 
If  plenty  in  the  verdant  blade  appear, 
What  may  we  not  soon  hope  for  in  the  ear! 
When  flowers  are  beautiful  before  they're  blown, 
What  rarities  will  afterward  be  shown." 

The  uncle  was  living  in  New  England  when  Josiah, 
Franklin's  brother,  who  had  run  away  to  sea,  and  who 
had  not  been  heard  from  for  nine  years,  turned  up  again 
in  Boston.  That  was  a  domestic  event  of  entirely  too 
much  importance  to  be  unsung  by  an  uncle  at  once  pious 
and  poetical.  So,  after  some  vigorous  references  to  the 
Deity,  who 

"Stills  the  storm  and  does  Asswage 
Proud  Dreadfull  seas  Death-Threatning  Rage," 

the  honest  poet  breaks  out  into  this  invocation  in  which 
he  had  every  right  to  believe  that  the  long-lost  Josiah 
would  heartily  join : 

"0  Let  men  praise  this  mighty  Lord, 
And  all  his  Wondrous  Works  Record; 
Let  all  the  Sons  of  men,  before 
Whose  Eyes  those  Works  are  Done,  Adore." 

But  his  rhymes  appear  to  have  fallen  upon  an  ear  deaf 
to  the  appeals  of  both  piety  and  poetry,  for  one  of  the 
poet's  poetry  books  contains  this  resentful  entry: 

"The  Third  part  of  the  107  psalm,  Which  Follows  Next, 
I  composed  to  sing  at  First  meeting  with  my  Nephew 
Josiah  Franklin,  But  being  unaffected  with  Gods  Great 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  277 

Goodn3:  In  his  many  preservations  and  Deliverances, 
It  was  coldly  Entertain 'd." 

The  extent  to  which  his  uncle  Benjamin  had  been  a 
politician  in  England  was  brought  home  to  Franklin  by  a 
curious  incident  when  he  was  in  London.  A  second-hand 
book  dealer,  who  knew  nothing  of  the  relationship  between 
the  two,  offered  to  sell  him  a  collection  of  pamphlets, 
bound  in  eight  volumes  folio,  and  twenty-four  volumes, 
quarto  and  octavo,  and  containing  all  the  principal 
pamphlets  and  papers  on  political  topics,  printed  in  Eng- 
land from  the  Restoration  down  to  the  year  171 5.  On 
examining  them,  Franklin  was  satisfied  from  the  hand- 
writing of  the  tables  of  contents,  memoranda  of  prices 
and  marginal  notes  in  them,  as  well  as  from  other  cir- 
cumstances, that  his  Uncle  Benjamin  was  the  collector, 
and  he  bought  them.  In  all  probability,  they  had  been 
sold  by  the  uncle,  when  he  emigrated  from  England  to 
New  England  more  than  fifty  years  before. 

The  Autobiography  does  not  mention  the  fact  that 
Franklin  had  at  least  one  aunt  on  the  paternal  side,  but 
he  had.  In  a  letter  in  the  year  1767  to  Samuel  Franklin, 
the  grandson  of  his  Uncle  Benjamin,  after  stating  that 
there  were  at  that  time  but  two  of  their  relations  bearing 
the  name  of  Franklin  living  in  England,  namely,  Thomas 
Franklin,  of  Lutterworth,  in  Leicestershire,  a  dyer,  and 
his  daughter,  Sally,  Franklin  asserts  that  there  were 
besides  still  living  in  England  Eleanor  Morris,  an  old 
maiden  lady,  the  daughter  of  Hannah,  the  sister  of  Frank- 
lin's father,  and  Hannah  Walker,  the  granddaughter  of 
John,  the  brother  of  Franklin's  father,  and  her  three  sons. 
No  Arab  was  ever  made  happier  by  the  reception  of  a 
guest  than  was  Franklin  by  the  discovery  of  a  new  Frank- 
lin. In  1 78 1,  when  a  lady  at  Konigsberg,  who  was  the 
granddaughter  of  a  John  Franklin,  communicated  to 
him  certain  facts  about  her  family  history,  he  replied  in 
terms  that  left  her  no  footing  for  a  claim  of  relationship, 


278      Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

but  added  affably,  "It  would  be  a  Pleasure  to  me  to 
Discover  a  Relation  in  Europe,  possessing  the  amiable 
Sentiments  express'd  in  your  Letter.  I  assure  you  I 
should  not  disown  the  meanest."  One  of  the  statements 
of  this  letter  was  that  he  had  exact  accounts  of  every 
person  of  his  family  since  the  year  1555,  when  it  was 
established  in  England.  Such  a  thing  as  sensitiveness  to 
his  humble  origin  or  the  social  obscurity  of  his  kinsfolk 
could  find  no  lodgment  in  a  mind  so  capacious,  a  heart  so 
kind,  or  a  nature  so  full  of  manly  self-respect  as  his.  To 
say  nothing  more,  he  was  too  much  of  a  philosopher  not  to 
realize  how  close  even  the  high-born  nobleman,  when 
detached  from  privilege  and  social  superstition,  is  to  the 
forked  radish,  to  which  elemental  man  has  been  likened. 
It  is  true  that  he  once  wrote  to  his  sister  Jane  that  he 
would  not  have  her  son  Peter  put  the  Franklin  arms  on 
soap  of  his  making,  and  this  has  been  cited  as  evidence 
that  even  Franklin  had  his  petty  modicum  of  social  pride. 
The  imputation  overlooks  the  reason  that  he  gave, 
namely,  that  to  use  the  Franklin  coat  of  arms  for  such  a 
purpose  would  look  too  much  like  an  attempt  to  counter- 
feit the  soap  formerly  made  by  Peter's  uncle  John.  It 
was  Franklin's  true  pride  of  character  that  disarmed 
the  social  arrogance  which  might  otherwise  have  ren- 
dered him  less  triumphantly  successful  than  he  was  in 
winning  his  way  into  the  favor  of  the  most  accomplished 
men,  and  the  most  beautiful  and  elegant  women,  in 
France. 

With  regard  to  his  generous  conduct  to  his  brother 
James  we  have  already  spoken.  Of  Jemmy,  James'  son, 
who  became  Franklin's  apprentice  at  James'  request, 
we  have  a  view  in  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  his  sister  Jane 
in  which  he  uses  Jemmy  as  an  illustration  of  how  un- 
reasonably her  son  Benny,  when  Mr.  Parker's  apprentice, 
might  have  complained  of  the  clothes  furnished  to  him 
by  his  master. 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  279 

I  never  knew  an  apprentice  [he  said]  contented  with  the 
clothes  allowed  him  by  his  master,  let  them  be  what  they 
would.  Jemmy  Franklin,  when  with  me,  was  always  dis- 
satisfied and  grumbling.  When  I  was  last  in  Boston,  his  aunt 
bid  him  go  to  a  shop  and  please  himself,  which  the  gentleman 
did,  and  bought  a  suit  of  clothes  on  my  account  dearer  by  one 
half  than  any  I  ever  afforded  myself,  one  suit  excepted;  which 
I  don't  mention  by  way  of  complaint  of  Jemmy,  for  he  and  I 
are  good  friends,  but  only  to  show  you  the  nature  of  boys. 

What  a  good  friend  he  proved  to  Jemmy,  when  the 
latter  became  his  own  master,  we  have  seen.  The  erratum 
of  which  Franklin  was  guilty  in  his  relations  to  his  brother 
James  was  fully  corrected  long  before  he  left  a  will  behind 
him  conferring  upon  James'  descendants  the  same  measure 
of  his  remembrance  as  that  conferred  by  him  upon  the 
descendants  of  his  brother  Samuel  and  his  sisters. 

Four  of  Franklin's  brothers  died  young,  and  Josiah, 
his  sea  faring  brother,  perished  at  sea  not  long  after  he 
excited  the  dudgeon  of  his  uncle  Benjamin  by  his  in- 
difference to  his  uncle's  line  of  thanksgiving. 

As  long  as  Franklin's  brothers  John  and  Peter  were 
engaged,  as  their  father  had  been,  in  the  business  of 
making  soap  and  candles,  Franklin  assisted  them  by 
obtaining  consignments  of  their  wares  from  them,  and 
advertising  these  wares  in  his  newspaper,  and  selling 
them  in  his  shop.  Later,  when  he  became  Deputy  Post- 
master-General of  the  Colonies,  he  made  John  postmaster 
at  Boston  and  Peter  postmaster  at  Philadelphia.  Refer- 
ring to  a  visit  that  he  paid  to  John  at  Newport,  Franklin 
says  in  the  Autobiography,  "He  received  me  very  affec- 
tionately, for  he  always  lov'd  me."  When  John  died 
in  1756  at  the  age  of  sixty-five,  some  years  after  his 
brother  Benjamin  had  thoughtfully  devised  a  special 
catheter  for  his  use,  the  latter  wrote  to  his  sister  Jane,  "I 
condole  with  you  on  the  loss  of  our  dear  brother.  As  our 
number  grows  less,  let  us  love  one  another  proportionably 


280       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

more."    John's  widow  he  made  postmistress  at  Boston 
in  her  husband's  place. 

Peter  Franklin  died  in  1766  in  the  seventy-fourth  year 
of  his  age.  As  soon  as  the  news  of  Peter's  death  reached 
Franklin  in  London,  he  wrote  a  most  feeling  letter  to 
Peter's  widow,  Mary. 

It  has  pleased  God  at  length  [he  said]  to  take  from  us  my 
only  remaining  Brother,  and  your  affectionate  Husband, 
with  whom  you  have  lived  in  uninterrupted  Harmony  and 
Love  near  half  a  Century. 

Considering  the  many  Dangers  &  Hardships  his  Way  of 
Life  led  him  into,  and  the  Weakness  of  his  Constitution,  it  is 
wonderful  that  he  lasted  so  long.  It  was  God's  Goodness 
that  spared  him  to  us.  Let  us,  instead  of  repining  at  what  we 
have  lost,  be  thankful  for  what  we  have  enjoyed. 

He  then  proceeds,  in  order  to  allay  the  widow's  fears 
as  to  her  future,  to  tell  her  that  he  proposes  to  set  up  a 
printing  house  for  her  adopted  son  to  be  carried  on  in 
partnership  with  her,  and  to  further  encourage  this  son 
if  he  managed  well. * 

Of  Franklin's  brother  Samuel,  we  know  but  little. 

Franklin's  oldest  sister,  Elizabeth  Dowse,  the  wife  of 
Captain  Dowse,  lived  to  a  very  great  age,  and  fell  into  a 
state  of  extreme  poverty.  When  he  was  consulted  by 
her  relations  in  New  England  as  to  whether  it  was  not 
best  for  her  to  give  up  the  house  in  which  she  was  living, 
and  to  sell  her  personal  effects,  he  sent  a  reply  full  of  wise 
kindness. 

As  having  their  own  way  is  one  of  the  greatest  comforts  of 
life  to  old  people  [he  said],  I  think  their  friends  should  en- 

1  That  Peter  Franklin  had  some  of  the  ability  of  his  famous  brother 
we  may  infer  from  a  long  letter  written  to  him  by  Franklin  in  which  the 
latter,  after  acknowledging  the  receipt  of  a  ballad  by  Peter,  descants  upon 
the  superiority  of  the  old,  simple  ditties  over  modern  songs  in  lively  and 
searching  terms  which  he  would  hardly  have  wasted  on  a  man  of  ordinary 
intelligence. 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  281 

deavour  to  accommodate  them  in  that,  as  well  as  in  anything 
else.  When  they  have  long  lived  in  a  house,  it  becomes 
natural  to  them;  they  are  almost  as  closely  connected  with  it, 
as  the  tortoise  with  his  shell;  they  die,  if  you  tear  them  out  of 
it;  old  folks  and  old  trees,  if  you  remove  them,  it  is  ten  to  one 
that  you  kill  them;  so  let  our  good  old  sister  be  no  more 
importuned  on  that  head.  We  are  growing  old  fast  ourselves, 
and  shall  expect  the  same  kind  of  indulgences;  if  we  give  them, 
we  shall  have  a  right  to  receive  them  in  our  turn. 

And  as  to  her  few  fine  things,  I  think  she  is  in  the  right 
not  to  sell  them,  and  for  the  reason  she  gives,  that  they  will 
fetch  but  little;  and  when  that  little  is  spent,  they  would  be 
of  no  further  use  to  her;  but  perhaps  the  expectation  of  pos- 
sessing them  at  her  death  may  make  that  person  tender  and 
careful  of  her,  and  helpful  to  her  to  the  amount  of  ten  times 
their  value.  If  so,  they  are  put  to  the  best  use  they  possibly 
can  be. 

I  hope  you  visit  sister  as  often  as  your  affairs  will  permit, 
and  afford  her  what  assistance  and  comfort  you  can  in  her 
present  situation.  Old  age,  infirmities,  and  poverty,  joined, 
are  afflictions  enough.  The  neglect  and  slights  of  friends  and 
near  relations  should  never  be  added.  People  in  ■  her  cir- 
cumstances are  apt  to  suspect  this  sometimes  without  cause; 
appearances  should  therefore  be  attended  to,  in  our  conduct 
towards  them,  as  well  as  realities. 

And  then  follows  the  sentence  which  indicates  that, 
apart  from  the  value,  which  belonged  to  his  advice  on  any 
practical  point,  there  was  good  reason  why  his  views  about 
sister  Dowse's  house  and  finery  should  be  entitled  to  pecu- 
liar respect.  "I  write  by  this  post  to  cousin  Williams,' ' 
he  said,  "to  continue  his  care,  which  I  doubt  not  he  will 
do." 

This  letter  was  addressed  to  his  sister  Jane.  In  another 
to  her,  written  a  few  weeks  later,  he  said,  "I  am  glad  you 
have  resolved  to  visit  sister  Dowse  oftener;  it  will  be  a 
great  comfort  to  her  to  find  she  is  not  neglected  by  you,  and 
your  example  may,  perhaps,  be  followed  by  some  others 


282       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

of  her  relations/ '  In  the  succeeding  year,  when  he  was 
settled  in  England,  he  writes  to  his  sister  Jane,  "My  wife 
will  let  you  see  my  letter,  containing  an  account  of  our 
travels,  which  I  would  have  you  read  to  sister  Dowse, 
and  give  my  love  to  her." 

Another  sister  of  Franklin,  Mary,  married  Captain 
Robert  Holmes.  He  was  the  master  of  a  sloop  that 
plied  between  Boston  and  the  Delaware,  and,  when  he 
heard  at  New  Castle  that  his  run-a-way  brother-in-law 
was  living  in  Philadelphia,  he  wrote  to  him  begging  him 
to  return  to  Boston,  and  received  from  him  a  reply, 
composed  with  so  much  literary  skill  that  Governor 
Keith  of  Pennsylvania,  when  the  letter  was  shown  to 
him  by  Holmes,  declared  that  the  writer  appeared  to  be  a 
young  man  of  promising  parts,  and  should -be  encouraged. 
Mrs.  Holmes  died  of  cancer  of  the  breast,  which  is  re- 
sponsible for  the  only  occasion  perhaps  on  which  Franklin 
was  ever  known  to  incline  his  ear  to  the  virtues  of  a 
nostrum. 

We  have  here  in  town  [he  wrote  to  his  sister  Jane]  a  kind 
of  shell  made  of  some  wood,  cut  at  a  proper  time,  by  some  man 
of  great  skill  (as  they  say),  which  has  done  wonders  in  that 
disease  among  us,  being  worn  for  some  time  on  the  breast. 
I  am  not  apt  to  be  superstitiously  fond  of  believing  such 
things,  but  the  instances  are  so  well  attested,  as  sufficiently 
to  convince  the  most  incredulous. 

Another  sister  of  Franklin,  Lydia,  married  Robert 
Scott,  but  our  information  about  her  is  very  meagre. 

This  is  also  true  of  Anne  Harris,  still  another  sister  of 
his.  We  do  know,  however,  that  some  of  her  family 
wandered  away  to  London  before  Franklin  left  America 
on  his  mission  to  France,  and  that  one  of  them  took  pains 
to  apprise  him  of  her  urgent  wants  after  he  arrived  there. 
She  was,  she  said,  "Obliged  to  Worke  very  hard  and  Can 
But  just  git  the  common  necessarys  of  life, "  and  therefore 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  283 

had  "  thoughts  of  going  into  a  family  as  housekeeper  .  .  . 
having  lived  in  that  station  for  several  years  and  gave 
grate  satisfaction.* '  With  a  curious  disregard  to  existing 
conditions,  quite  unworthy  of  her  connection  with  her 
illustrious  relative,  she  even  asked  him  to  aid  her  in 
securing  the  promotion  of  her  son  in  the  British  Navy. 

A  daughter  of  this  sister,  Grace  Harris,  married  Jona- 
than Williams,  a  Boston  merchant  engaged  in  the  West 
India  trade,  who  enjoyed  the  honor  of  acting  as  the 
moderator  of  the  meetings  held  at  Faneuil  Hall  in  1773 
for  the  purpose  of  preventing  the  landing  of  the  odious 
tea.  She  must  have  been  an  elated  mother  when  she 
received  from  her  uncle  in  1771  a  letter  in  which  he  spoke 
of  her  two  sons  in  these  terms: 

They  are,  I  assure  you,  exceeding  welcome  to  me;  and 
they  behave  with  so  much  Prudence,  that  no  two  young  Men 
could  possibly  less  need  the  Advice  you  would  have  me  give 
them.  Josiah  is  very  happily  employ'd  in  his  Musical  Pur- 
suits. And  as  you  hinted  to  me,  that  it  would  be  agreeable  to 
you,  if  I  employ'd  Johnathan  in  Writing,  I  requested  him  to  put 
my  Accounts  in  Order,  which  had  been  much  neglected.  He 
undertook  it  with  the  utmost  chearfulness  and  Readiness,  and 
executed  it  with  the  greatest  Diligence,  making  me  a  compleat 
new  Set  of  Books,  fairly  written  out  and  settled  in  a  Mer- 
cantile Manner,  which  is  a  great  Satisfaction  to  me,  and  a  very 
considerable  service.  I  mention  this,  that  you  may  not  be 
in  the  least  Uneasy  from  an  Apprehension  of  their  Visit 
being  burthensome  to  me;  it  being,  I  assure  you,  quite  the 
contrary. 

It  has  been  wonderful  to  me  to  see  a  young  Man  from 
America,  in  a  Place  so  full  of  various  Amusements  as  London 
is,  as  attentive  to  Business,  as  diligent  in  it,  and  keeping  as 
close  at  home  till  it  was  finished,  as  if  it  had  been  for  his  own 
Profit;  and  as  if  he  had  been  at  the  Public  Diversions  so  often, 
as  to  be  tired  of  them. 

I  pray  God  to  keep  and  preserve  you  and  yours,  and  give 
you  again,  in  due  time,  a  happy  Sight  of  these  valuable  Sons. 


284       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

The  same  favorable  opinion  of  these  two  grandnephews 
found  expression  in  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  his  sister 
Jane.  Josiah,  he  said,  had  attained  his  heart's  desire  in 
being  under  the  tuition  of  Mr.  Stanley  (the  musical 
composer),  who,  though  he  had  long  left  off  teaching, 
kindly  undertook,  at  Franklin's  request,  to  instruct  him, 
and  was  much  pleased  with  his  quickness  of  apprehension, 
and  the  progress  he  was  making,  and  Jonathan  appeared 
a  very  valuable  young  man,  sober,  regular  and  inclined 
to  industry  and  frugality,  which  were  promising  signs  of 
success  in  business.  "I  am  very  happy  in  their  Com- 
pany," the  letter  further  stated. 

With  the  help  of  Franklin,  Jonathan,  .one  of  these  two 
young  men,  became  the  naval  agent  of  the  United  States 
at  Nantes,  when  Franklin  was  in  France.  Later,  he  was 
charged  by  Arthur  Lee  with  improperly  retaining  in  his 
hands  in  this  capacity  upwards  of  one  hundred  thou- 
sand livres  due  to  the  United  States,  and  Franklin  insisted 
that  Arthur  Lee  should  make  good  his  charge. 

I  have  no  desire  to  screen  Mr.  Williams  on  ace1  of  his  being 
my  Nephew  [he  said]  if  he  is  guilty  of  what  you  charge  him 
with.  I  care  not  how  soon  he  is  deservedly  punish'd  and 
the  family  purg'd  of  him;  for  I  take  it  that  a  Rogue  living 
in  (a)  Family  is  a  greater  Disgrace  to  it  than  one  hang'd  out 
of  it. 

But,  when  steps  were  taken  by  Franklin  to  have  the 
accounts  passed  upon  by  a  body  of  disinterested  referees, 
Lee  haughtily  refused  to  reduce  his  vague  accusation  to  a 
form  sufficiently  specific  to  be  laid  before  them.  After 
John  Adams  succeeded  Silas  Deane,  Franklin  and  himself 
united  in  executing  an  order  for  the  payment  to  Williams 
of  the  balance  claimed  by  him,  but  Adams  had  been 
brought  over  to  the  suspicions  of  Lee  to  such  an  extent 
that  the  order  provided  that  it  was  not  to  be  understood  as 
an  approval  of  the  accounts,  but  that  Williams  was  to  be 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  285 

responsible  to  Congress  for  their  correctness.  With  such 
impetuosity  did  Adams  adopt  these  suspicions  that,  in  a 
few  days  after  his  arrival  at  Paris,  when  he  had  really 
had  no  opportunity  to  investigate  the  matter,  he  con- 
curred with  Lee  in  ordering  Williams  to  close  his  existing 
accounts  and  to  make  no  new  ones.  This,  of  course,  was 
equivalent  to  dismissal  from  the  employment.  Franklin, 
probably  realizing  not  only  the  hopelessness  of  a  contest 
of  one  against  two,  but  the  unwisdom  from  a  public  point 
of  view  of  feeding  the  flame  of  such  a  controversy,  united 
with  his  colleagues  in  signing  the  order. x 

A  bequest  of  books  that  he  made  to  Williams  is  one 
among  many  other  still  more  positive  proofs  that  his 
confidence  in  his  grandnephew  was  never  impaired,  and 
it  is  only  fair  to  the  memory  of  Adams  to  suppose  that,  if 
he  ever  had  any  substantial  doubts  about  Williams' 
integrity,   they  were   subsequently   dispelled,   for  when 

1  The  first  letter  from  the  Commissioners  to  Jonathan  Williams,  dated 
Apr.  13,  1778,  simply  asked  him  to  abstain  from  any  further  purchases 
as  naval  agent,  and  to  close  his  accounts  for  the  present.  It  was  not  until 
May  25,  1778,  that  a  letter  was  addressed  to  him  by  the  Commissioners 
expressly  revoking  his  authority  as  naval  agent  on  the  ground  that  Con- 
gress had  authorized  William  Lee  to  superintend  the  commercial  affairs 
of  America  in  general,  and  he  had  appointed  M.  Schweighauser,  a  German 
merchant,  as  the  person  to  look  after  all  the  maritime  and  commercial 
interests  of  America  in  the  Nantes  district.  In  signing  the  letter,  Franklin 
took  care  to  see  that  this  clause  was  inserted:  "It  is  not  from  any  preju- 
dice to  you,  Mr.  Williams,  for  whom  we  have  a  great  respect  and  esteem, 
but  merely  from  a  desire  to  save  the  public  money,  to  prevent  the  clashing 
of  claims  and  interests,  and  to  avoid  confusion  and  delays,  that  we  have 
taken  this  step."  The  result  was  that,  instead  of  the  uniform  commission 
of  two  per  cent.,  charged  by  Williams  for  transacting  the  business  of  the 
naval  agency,  Schweighauser,  whose  clerk  was  Ludlow  Lee,  a  nephew  of 
Arthur  Lee,  charged  as  much  as  five  per  cent,  on  the  simple  delivery  of 
tobacco  to  the  farmers-general.  Later  Williams,  who  was  an  expert 
accountant,  was  restored  to  the  position  which  he  had  really  filled  with 
blameless  integrity  and  efficiency.  After  his  return  to  America,  his  career 
was  an  eminent  one.  He  is  termed  by  General  George  W.  Cullum  in 
his  work  on  the  campaigns  and  engineers  of  the  War  of  1 8 12-15  tne  father 
of  the  Engineer  Service  of  the  United  States.  In  the  same  work,  General 
Cullum  also  speaks  of  his  "noble  character." 


286       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

President  he  appointed  Williams  a  major  of  artillery  in  the 
federal  army;  an  appointment  which  ultimately  resulted 
in  his  being  made  the  first  Superintendent  of  the  Military 
Academy  at  West  Point.  The  quarrel,  however,  did 
neither  Franklin  nor  the  American  cause  any  good.  It 
gave  additional  color  to  the  accusation  that  he  was  too 
quick  to  billet  his  relatives  upon  the  public,  and  had  the 
effect  also  of  intensifying  the  dissensions  between  our 
representatives  in  France  which  constitute  such  a  painful 
chapter  in  the  history  of  the  American  Revolution.  To 
make  things  worse,  Jonathan  failed  in  business,  before  he 
left  France,  and  had  to  obtain  a  surseance  against  his 
creditors  through  the  application  of  his  granduncle  to  the 
Count  de  Vergennes. 

Franklin's  sister,  Sarah,  did  not  long  survive  her  marri- 
age to  Joseph  Davenport.  Her  death,  Franklin  wrote  to 
his  sister  Jane,  "was  a  loss  without  doubt  regretted  by  all 
that  knew  her,  for  she  was  a  good  woman."  It  was  at  his 
instance  that  Davenport  removed  to  Philadelphia,  and 
opened  a  bakery  where  he  sold  "choice  middling  bisket, " 
and  occasionally  "Boston  loaf  sugar"  and  "choice  pickled 
and  spiced  oisters  in  cags." 

There  is  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  Josiah  Davenport,  the 
son  of  Sarah  Davenport,  written  just  after  the  failure  of 
the  latter  in  business  which  shows  that,  open  as  the  door 
of  the  Post  Office  usually  was  to  members  of  the  Franklin 
family,  it  was  sometimes  slammed  with  a  bang  in  the  face 
of  a  mauvais  sujet  of  that  blood.  Franklin  advises  Josiah 
not  to  think  of  any  place  in  the  Post  Office. 

The  money  you  receive  [he  said]  will  slip  thro'  your  Fingers, 
and  you  will  run  behind  hand  imperceptibly,  when  your 
Securities  must  suffer,  or  your  Employers.  I  grow  too  old  to 
run  such  Risques,  and  therefore  wish  you  to  propose  nothing 
more  of  the  kind  to  me.  I  have  been  hurt  too  much  by  en- 
deavouring to  help  Cousin  Ben  Mecom.  I  have  no  Opinion 
of  the  Punctuality  of  Cousins.     They  are  apt  to  take  Liberties 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  287 

with  Relations  they  would  not  take  with  others,  from  a  Con- 
fidence that  a  Relation  will  not  sue  them.  And  tho'  I  believe 
you  now  resolve  and  intend  well  in  case  of  such  an  Appoint- 
ment, I  can  have  no  Dependence  that  some  unexpected  Mis- 
fortune or  Difficulty  will  not  embarras  your  Affairs  and  render 
you  again  insolvent.  Don't  take  this  unkind.  It  is  better  to 
be  thus  free  with  you  than  to  give  you  Expectations  that 
cannot  be  answered. 

So  Josiah,  who  was  keeping  a  little  shop  at  the  time, 
like  the  famous  office-seeker,  who  is  said  to  have  begun 
by  asking  Lincoln  for  an  office  and  to  have  ended  by  asking 
him  for  a  pair  of  trousers,  had  to  content  himself  with  a 
gift  of  four  dozen  of  Evans'  maps,  "which, "  said  Franklin 
in  his  letter,  "if  you  can  sell  you  are  welcome  to  apply 
the  Money  towards  Clothing  your  Boys,  or  to  any  other 
Purpose." 

But,  of  all  Franklin's  collateral  relatives,  the  one  that 
he  loved  best  was  his  sister  Jane,  the  wife  of  Edward 
Mecom.  She  survived  her  brother  four  years,  dying  at 
the  age  of  eighty- two,  and,  from  her  childhood  until  his 
death,  they  cherished  for  each  other  the  most  devoted 
affection.  Her  letters  show  that  she  was  a  woman  of 
uncommon  force  of  character  and  mind,  and  the  possessor 
of  a  heart  so  overflowing  with  tenderness  that,  when  she 
heard  of  the  birth  of  Mrs.  Bache's  seventh  child,  she  even 
stated  to  her  brother  in  her  delight  that  she  was  so  fond  of 
children  that  she  longed  to  kiss  and  play  with  every  clean, 
healthy  one  that  she  saw  on  the  street.  Mrs.  Bache,  she 
thought,  might  yet  be  the  mother  of  twelve  children  like 
herself,  though  she  did  not  begin  so  young. 

In  a  letter  written  to  her  by  Franklin  from  Philadelphia 
just  after  he  reached  his  majority,  and  when  she  was  a 
fresh  girl  of  fourteen,  he  reminds  her  that  she  was  ever 
his  peculiar  favorite.  He  had  heard,  he  said,  that  she 
was  grown  a  celebrated  beauty,  and  he  had  almost  deter- 
mined to  give  her  a  tea  table,  but  when  he  considered 


288       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

that  the  character  of  a  good  housewife  was  far  preferable 
to  that  of  being  only  a  pretty  gentlewoman  he  had  con- 
cluded to  send  her  a  spinning  wheel,  as  a  small  token  of 
his  sincere  love  and  affection.  Then  followed  this  priggish 
advice: 

Sister,  farewell,  and  remember  that  modesty,  as  it  makes 
the  most  homely  virgin  amiable  and  charming,  so  the  want 
of  it  infallibly  renders  the  most  perfect  beauty  disagreeable 
and  odious.  But,  when  that  brightest  of  female  virtues 
shines  among  other  perfections  of  body  and  mind  in  the 
same  person,  it  makes  the  woman  more  lovely  than  an  angel. 

The  spinning  wheel  was  a  fit  symbol  of  the  narrow, 
struggling  life,  which  was  to  be  Jane  Mecom's  portion, 
and  which  would  have  imposed  upon  her  a  load  heavier 
than  she  could  have  borne  if  her  good  Philadelphia  genius 
had  not  always  been  by  her  side,  either  in  person  or  by 
his  watchful  proxy,  Jonathan  Williams,  the  father  of  his 
grandnephew  of  that  name,  to  sustain  her  fainting  foot- 
steps. Children  she  had,  and  to  spare,  but  they  were  all 
striking  illustrations  of  the  truth,  uttered  by  the  Virginia 
planter,  who  affirmed  that  it  is  easier  for  one  parent  to 
take  care  of  thirteen  children  than  it  is  for  thirteen  chil- 
dren to  take  care  of  one  parent.  Nothing  could  be  more 
beautiful  than  the  relations  between  brother  and  sister; 
on  the  one  side  a  vigilant  sympathy  and  generosity  which 
never  lost  sight  for  a  moment  of  the  object  of  their  affec- 
tionate and  helpful  offices;  on  the  other  a  grateful  idolatry, 
slightly  tinged  with  the  reserve  of  reverence.  Clothes, 
flour,  firewood,  money  were  among  the  more  direct  and 
material  forms  assumed  by  Franklin's  assistance,  given 
not  begrudgingly  and  frugally,  but  always  with  the 
anxious  fear,  to  no  little  extent  justified  by  Jane's  own 
unselfish  and  self-respecting  reticence,  that  she  was  not 
as  frank  as  she  might  be  in  laying  before  him  the  real 
measure  of  her  necessities.     "Let  me  know  if  you  want 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  289 

any  assistance/'  he  was  quick  to  ask  her  after  his  return 
from  England  in  1775,  signing  the  letter  in  which  he  made 
the  request,  "Your  very  loving  brother."  "Your  bill  is 
honoured,"  he  writes  to  her  on  another  occasion  after  his 
return  from  France  to  Philadelphia.  "It  is  impossible 
for  me  always  to  guess  what  you  may  want,  and  I  hope, 
therefore,  that  you  will  never  be  shy  in  letting  me  know 
wherein  I  can  help  to  make  your  life  more  comfortable." 

How  has  my  poor  old  Sister  gone  thro'  the  Winter?  [he 
inquired  of  Jonathan  Williams,  the  younger].  Tell  me  frankly 
whether  she  lives  comfortably,  or  is  pinched?  For  I  am 
afraid  she  is  too  cautious  of  acquainting  me  with  all  her 
Difficulties,  tho'  I  am  always  ready  and  willing  to  relieve 
her  when  I  am  acquainted  with  them. 

It  is  manifest  that  at  times  he  experienced  a  serious 
sense  of  difficulty  in  doing  for  her  as  much  as  he  was 
disposed  to  do,  and  once,  when  she  had  thanked  him 
with  even  more  than  her  usual  emphasis  for  a  recent  bene- 
faction, he  parried  her  gratitude  with  one  of  the  humorous 
stories  that  served  him  for  so  many  different  purposes. 
Her  letter  of  extravagant  thanks,  he  said,  put  him  in 
mind  of  the  story  of  the  member  of  Parliament  who 
began  one  of  his  speeches  with  saying  he  thanked  God 
that  he  was  born  and  bred  a  Presbyterian;  on  which 
another  took  leave  to  observe  that  the  gentleman  must 
needs  be  of  a  most  grateful  disposition,  since  he  was  thank- 
ful for  such  very  small  matters.  The  truth  is  that  her 
pecuniary  condition  was  such  that  gifts,  which  might  have 
seemed  small  enough  to  others,  loomed  large  to  her. 
Many  doubtless  were  the  shifts  to  which  she  had  to 
resort  to  keep  her  large  family  going.  When  her  brother 
was  in  London  on  his  second  mission,  he  received  a  letter 
from  her  asking  him  for  some  fine  old  linen  or  cambric 
dyed  with  bright  colors,  such  as  with  all  her  own  art  and 
the  aid  of  good  old  Uncle  Benjamin's  memoranda  she 

VOL.  I— 19 


290       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

had  been  unable,  she  said,  to  mix  herself.  With  this 
material,  she  hoped  that  she  and  her  daughter  Jenny, 
who,  with  a  little  of  her  assistance,  had  taken  to  making 
flowers  for  the  ladies*  heads  and  bosoms  with  pretty  good 
acceptance,  might  get  something  by  it  worth  their  pains, 
if  they  lived  till  next  spring.  Her  language  was  mani- 
festly that  of  a  person  whose  life  had  been  too  pinched  to 
permit  her  to  deal  with  the  future  except  at  very  close 
range.  Of  course,  her  request  was  complied  with.  The 
contrast  between  her  situation  in  life  and  that  of  her 
prosperous  and  distinguished  brother  is  brought  out  as 
clearly  as  the  colors  that  she  vainly  sought  to  emulate  in 
a  letter  written  by  her  to  Deborah,  when  she  hears  the 
rumor  that  Franklin  had  been  made  a  Baronet  and 
Governor  of  Pennsylvania.  Signing  herself,  "Your  lady- 
ship's affectionate  sister,  and  obedient  humble  servant," 
she  wrote : 

Dear  Sister:  For  so  I  must  call  you,  come  what  will,  and 
if  I  do  not  express  myself  proper,  you  must  excuse  it,  seeing 
I  have  not  been  accustomed  to  pay  my  compliments  to 
Governor  and  Baronet's  ladies.  I  am  in  the  midst  of  a  great 
wash,  and  Sarah  still  sick,  and  would  gladly  be  excused  writing 
this  post,  but  my  husband  says  I  must  write,  and  give  you  joy, 
which  we  heartily  join  in. 

This  was  in  1758  when  Franklin  and  other  good  Ameri- 
cans rarely  alluded  to  England  except  as  "home";  but 
sixteen  years  later  the  feelings  of  Jane  Mecom  about 
baronetcies  and  colonial  governorships  had  undergone 
such  a  change — for  she  was  a  staunch  patriot — that, 
when  it  was  stated  in  a  Boston  newspaper  that  it  was 
generally  believed  that  Franklin  had  been  promoted 
by  the  English  Government  to  an  office  of  superior  im- 
portance, he  felt  that  it  was  necessary  to  write  to  her  as 
follows : 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  291 

But  as  I  am  anxious  to  preserve  your  good  opinion,  and  as 
I  know  your  sentiments,  and  that  you  must  be  much  afflicted 
yourself,  and  even  despise  me,  if  you  thought  me  capable 
of  accepting  any  office  from  this  government,  while  it  is 
acting  with  so  much  hostility  towards  my  native  country, 
I  cannot  miss  this  first  opportunity  of  assuring  you,  that 
there  is  not  the  least  foundation  for  such  a  report. 

You  need  not  [he  said  on  one  occasion  to  Jane]  be  con- 
cern'd,  in  writing  to  me,  about  your  bad  Spelling;  for,  in  my 
Opinion,  as  our  Alphabet  now  Stands,  the  bad  Spelling,  or 
what  is  call'd  so,  is  generally  the  best,  as  conforming  to  the 
Sound  of  the  Letters  and  of  the  Words.  To  give  you  an 
Instance:  A  Gentleman  receiving  a  Letter,  in  which  were 
these  Words, — Not  finding  Brown  at  hom,  I  delivard  your 
meseg  to  his  yf.  The  Gentleman  finding  it  bad  Spelling,  and 
therefore  not  very  intelligible,  called  his  Lady  to  help  him 
read  it.  Between  them  they  pick'd  out  the  meaning  of  all  but 
the  yf,  which  they  could  not  understand.  The  lady  propos'd 
calling  her  Chambermaid:  for  Betty,  says  she,  has  the  best 
knack  at  reading  bad  Spelling  of  anyone  I  know.  Betty 
came,  and  was  surprised,  that  neither  Sir  nor  Madam  could 
tell  what  yf  was.  "Why,"  says  she,  "yf  spells  Wife;  what 
else  can  it  spell?"  And,  indeed,  it  is  a  much  better,  as  well 
as  shorter  method  of  spelling  Wife,  than  by  doubleyou,  i,  ef, 
e,  which  in  reality  spells  doubleyifey. 

The  affectionate  interest  felt  by  Franklin  in  his  sister 
extended  to  her  husband  and  children.  Some  of  his 
letters  were  written  to  Jane  and  Edward  Mecom  jointly, 
and  he  evidently  entertained  a  truly  fraternal  regard  for 
the  latter.  The  fortunes  of  the  children  he  endeavored 
to  promote  by  every  means  in  his  power.  Benny  Mecom 
was  placed  by  him  as  an  apprentice  with  his  partner  in 
the  printing  business  in  New  York,  Mr.  Parker,  and  one 
of  his  most  admirable  letters  is  a  letter  to  his  sister  Jane, 
already  mentioned  by  us,  in  which  he  comments  upon  a 
complaint  of  ill-treatment  at  the  hands  of  Mr.  Parker 
which  Benny  had  made  to  her.     The  wise,  kindly  and  yet 


292       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

firm  language  in  which  he  answers  one  by  one  the  heads 
of  Benny's  complaint,  which  was  obviously  nothing  more 
than  the  grumbling  of  a  disaffected  boy,  lacks  nothing 
but  a  subject  of  graver  importance  to  be  among  the  most 
notable  of  his  letters.  On  the  whole,  it  was  too  affection- 
ate and  indulgent  in  tone  to  have  keenly  offended  even 
such  parental  fondness  as  that  which  led  Poor  Richard 
to  ask,  in  the  words  of  Gay, 

"Where  yet  was  ever  found  the  mother 
Who'd  change  her  booby  for  another?" 

But  occasionally  there  is  a  sentence  or  so  in  it  which  makes 
it  quite  plain  that  Franklin  was  entirely  too  wise  not  to 
know  that  the  rod  has  a  function  to  perform  in  the  man- 
agement of  a  boy.  Referring  to  Benny's  habit  of  staying 
out  at  night,  sometimes  all  night,  and  refusing  to  give  an 
account  of  where  he  had  spent  his  time  or  in  what  com- 
pany, he  said, 

This  I  had  not  heard  of  before  though  I  perceive  you  have. 
I  do  not  wonder  at  his  correcting  him  for  that.  If  he  was 
my  own  son  I  should  think  his  master  did  not  do  his  duty 
by  him  if  he  omitted  it,  for  to  be  sure  it  is  the  high  road  to 
destruction.  And  I  think  the  correction  very  light,  and 
not  likely  to  be  very  effectual,  if  the  strokes  left  no  marks. 

In  the  same  letter,  there  is  a  sly  passage  which  takes 
us  back  to  the  part  of  Jacques'  homily  which  speaks  of 

"The  whining  schoolboy  with  his  satchel, 
And  shining  morning  face  creeping  like  snail, 
Unwillingly  to  school." 

I  did  not  think  it  anything  extraordinary  [Franklin  said] 
that  he  should  be  sometimes  willing  to  evade  going  to  meeting, 
for  I  believe  it  is  the  case  with  all  boys,  or  almost  all.  I  have 
brought  up  four  or  five  myself,  and  have  frequently  observed 
that  if  their  shoes  were  bad  they  would  say  nothing  of  a  new 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  293 

pair  till  Sunday  morning,  just  as  the  bell  rung,  when,  if  you 
asked  them  why  they  did  not  get  ready,  the  answer  was 
prepared,  "  I  have  no  shoes, "  and  so  of  other  things,  hats  and 
the  like;  or,  if  they  knew  of  anything  that  wanted  mending, 
it  was  a  secret  till  Sunday  morning,  and  sometimes  I  believe 
they  would  rather  tear  a  little  than  be  without  the  excuse. 


Franklin  had  dipped  deeply  into  the  hearts  of  boys  as 
well  as  men. 

When  Benny  became  old  enough  to  enter  upon  business 
for  himself,  his  uncle  put  him  in  possession  of  a  printing 
outfit  of  his  own  at  Antigua  with  the  understanding  that 
Benny  was  to  pay  him  one  third  of  the  profits  of  the  busi- 
ness; the  proportion  which  he  usually  received  in  such 
cases.  Apparently  there  was  every  promise  of  success: 
an  established  newspaper,  no  competing  printer,  high 
prices  and  a  printer  who,  whatever  his  faults,  had  come  to 
be  regarded  by  Mr.  Parker  as  one  of  his  "best  hands." 
But  the  curse  of  Reuben — instability — rested  upon  Benny. 
Taking  offence  at  a  proposal  of  his  uncle  respecting  the 
distribution  of  the  profits  of  the  business,  really  intended 
to  pave  the  way,  when  Benny  had  conquered  his  "flighty 
unsteadiness  of  temper,"  to  a  gift  of  the  whole  printing 
outfit  to  him,  the  nephew  insisted  that  his  uncle  should 
name  some  certain  price  for  the  outfit,  and  allow  him  to 
pay  it  off  in  instalments;  for,  though  he  had,  he  said,  a 
high  esteem  for  his  uncle,  yet  he  loved  freedom,  and  his 
spirit  could  not  bear  dependence  on  any  man,  though  he 
were  the  best  man  living.  Provoked  by  a  delay  in  answer- 
ing this  letter,  for  which  one  of  Franklin's  long  journeys 
was  responsible,  Benny  again  wrote  to  his  uncle,  stating 
that  he  had  formed  a  fixed  resolution  to  leave  Antigua, 
and  that  nothing  that  could  be  said  to  him  would  move  or 
shake  it.  Leave  Antigua  he  did,  and,  when  we  next  hear 
of  him,  it  is  through  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  Jane  in 
which  he  tells  her  that  Benjamin  had  settled  his  accounts 


294       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

with  him,  and  paid  the  balance  due  him  honorably,  and 
had  also  made  himself  the  owner  of  the  printing  outfit 
which  had  been  shipped  back  from  Antigua  to  Phila- 
delphia. 

From  this  time  on  until  Benny  slid  down  into  the  gulf 
of  insolvency;  owing  his  uncle  some  two  hundred  pounds, 
and  leaving  assets  that  the  latter  reckoned  would  scarce 
amount  to  four  shillings  in  the  pound,  he  seems  to  have 
had  no  success  of  any  sort  except  that  of  winning  the  hand 
of  a  girl  for  whom  Franklin  and  Deborah  had  a  peculiar 
partiality.  This  was  after  Benny  had  returned  to  Bos- 
ton and,  as  a  bookseller  as  well  as  a  printer,  had  be- 
gun life  anew  with  a  loan  from  his  uncle,  and  with  good 
credit. 

When  he  was  "near  being  married  M  his  uncle  wrote  to 
Jane: 

I  know  nothing  of  that  affair,  but  what  you  wiite  me, 
except  that  I  think  Miss  Betsey  a  very  agreeable,  sweet- 
tempered,  good  girl,  who  has  had  a  housewifely  education, 
and  will  make,  to  a  good  husband,  a  very  good  wife.  Your 
sister  and  I  have  a  great  esteem  for  her;  and,  if  she  will  be 
kind  enough  to  accept  of  our  nephew,  we  think  it  will  be  his 
own  fault,  if  he  is  not  as  happy  as  the  married  state  can  make 
him.  The  family  is  a  respectable  one,  but  whether  there 
be  any  fortune  I  know  not;  and,  as  you  do  not  inquire  about 
this  particular,  I  suppose  you  think  with  me,  that  where 
everything  else  desirable  is  to  be  met  with,  that  is  not  very 
material. 

What  Deborah  thought  of  Miss  Betsey  may  be  inferred 
from  a  postscript  that  she  hastily  annexed  to  this  letter: 
"  If  Benny  will  promise  to  be  one  of  the  tenderest  husbands 
in  the  world,  I  give  my  consent.  He  knows  already  what 
I  think  of  Miss  Betsey.  I  am  his  loving  aunt."  In  a 
subsequent  letter,  Franklin  wrote  to  Deborah  from  London 
that  he  was  glad  that  "  Ben  has  got  that  good  girl."  Miss 
Betsey  did  not  prove  to  be  a  fortune  to  her  husband, 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  295 

though  she  did  prove  to  be  such  a  fruitful  wife  to  him 
that,  when  the  crash  of  bankruptcy  came,  there  were  a 
number  of  small  children  to  be  included  in  his  schedule  of 
liabilities.  Nor  is  it  easy  to  see  how  she  or  any  other 
woman  could  prove  a  fortune  to  any  man  of  whom  such 
a  picture  could  be  sketched  as  that  which  Thomas,  the 
author  of  the  History  of  Printing,  sketches  of  Benny  as  he 
was  shortly  after  his  return  from  Antigua. 

Benjamin  Mecom  [writes  Thomas]  was  in  Boston  several 
months  before  the  arrival  of  his  press  and  types  from  Antigua, 
and  had  much  leisure.  During  this  interval  he  frequently 
came  to  the  house  where  I  was  an  apprentice.  He  was  hand- 
somely dressed,  wore  a  powdered  bob-wig,  ruffles,  and  gloves : 
gentleman-like  appendages,  which  the  printers  of  that  day 
did  not  assume — and  thus  appareled,  he  would  often  assist 
for  an  hour  at  the  press.  ...  I  viewed  him  at  the  press  with 
admiration.  He  indeed  put  on  a  apron  to  save  his  clothes 
from  blacking,  and  guarded  his  ruffles.  ...  He  got  the 
nickname  of  "Queer  Notions"  among  the  printers. 

The  result  of  it  all  was  that  the  patience  of  the  uncle 
was  at  last  completely  worn  out.  4 { I  can  not  comprehend, ! ' 
he  wrote  to  Deborah  from  London,  "how  so  very  sluggish  a 
Creature  as  Ben.  Mecom  is  grown,  can  maintain  in  Phila- 
delphia so  large  a  Family.  I  hope  they  do  not  hang  upon 
you:  for  really  as  we  grow  old  and  must  grow  more  help- 
less, we  shall  find  we  have  nothing  te'.pare." 

In  a  subsequent  letter  to  Williams  he  spoke  of  his 
sister's  children  as  if  they  were  all  thriftless.  If  such  was 
the  case,  it  was  not  because  of  any  lack  of  interest  on  his 
part  in  them.  In  a  letter,  recommending  his  son  William 
to  Jane's  motherly  care  and  advice,  he  says,  "  My  compli- 
ments to  my  new  niece,  Miss  Abiah,  and  pray  her  to 
accept  the  enclosed  piece  of  gold,  to  cut  her  teeth;  it  may 
afterwards  buy  nuts  for  them  to  crack."  In  another 
letter  to  his  sister,  he  expresses  pleasure  at  hearing  that 


296       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

her  son  Peter  is  at  a  place  where  he  has  full  employ.  If 
Peter  should  get  a  habit  of  industry  at  his  new  place,  the 
exchange,  he  said  pointedly,  would  be  a  happy  one.  In  a 
later  letter  to  Jane,  he  declares  that  he  is  glad  that  Peter 
is  acquainted  with  the  crown-soap  business  and  that  he 
hopes  that  he  will  always  take  care  to  make  the  soap 
faithfully  and  never  slight  the  manufacture,  or  attempt 
to  deceive  by  appearances.  Then  he  may  boldly  put  his 
name  and  mark,  and,  in  a  little  time,  it  will  acquire  as 
good  a  character  as  that  made  by  his  uncle  (John)  or  any 
other  person  whatever.  He  also  tells  Jane  that  if  Peter 
will  send  to  Deborah  a  box  of  his  soap  (but  not  unless 
it  be  right  good)  she  would  immediately  return  the  ready 
money  to  him  for  it.  Many  years  later  his  letters  to  his 
sister  show  that  he  was  then  aiding  her  in  different  ways, 
and  among  others  by  buying  soap  of  her  manufacture 
from  her,  and  that  some  cakes  of  this  soap  were  sent 
by  him  as  gifts  to  friends  of  his  in  France.  Indeed,  he 
told  Jane  that  she  would  do  well  to  instruct  her  grandson 
in  the  art  of  making  that  soap.  In  the  same  letter  that  he 
wrote  to  her  about  Peter  and  the  crown-soap  he  sent  his 
love  to  her  son  Neddy,  and  Neddy's  wife,  and  the  rest  of 
Jane's  children.  Neddy,  born  like  Benny  under  an  un- 
lucky star,  had  at  the  time  not  only  a  wife  but  a  disorder 
which  his  uncle  hoped  that  he  would  wear  out  gradually, 
as  he  was  yet  a  young  man.  If  Eben,  another  of  Jane's 
sons,  would  be  industrious  and  frugal,  it  was  ten  to  one, 
his  uncle  said,  that  he  would  get  rich;  for  he  seemed  to  have 
spirit  and  activity.  As  to  Johnny,  still  another  of  Jane's 
sons,  if  he  ever  set  up  as  a  goldsmith,  he  should  remember 
that  there  was  one  accomplishment,  without  which  he 
could  not  possibly  thrive  in  that  trade;  that  was  perfect 
honesty.  In  the  latter  part  of  his  life,  after  he  had  been 
badly  hurt  by  Benny,  and  had  seen  so  much  of  his  sound 
counsel  come  to  nothing,  he  was  slower  to  give  advice  to 
the  Mecoms. 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  297 

Your  Grandson  [he  wrote  to  Jane,  referring  to  one  of  her 
grandsons,  who  was  for  a  time  in  his  employment  at  Phila- 
delphia] behaves  very  well,  and  is  constantly  employ'd  in 
writing  for  me,  and  will  be  so  some  time  longer.  As  to  my 
Reproving  and  Advising  him,  which  you  desire,  he  has  not 
hitherto  appeared  to  need  it,  which  is  lucky,  as  I  am  not  fond 
of  giving  Advice,  having  seldom  seen  it  taken.  An  Italian 
Poet  in  his  Account  of  a  Voyage  to  the  Moon,  tells  us  that 

All  things  lost  on  Earth  are  treasured  there. 

on  which  somebody  observ'd,  There  must  then  be  in  the 
Moon  a  great  deal  of  Good  Advice. 

Among  the  letters  from  Franklin  to  Jonathan  Williams, 
the  elder,  is  one  asking  him  to  lay  out  for  his  account  the 
sum  of  fifty  pounds  in  the  purchase  of  a  marriage  present 
for  one  of  Jane's  daughters,  who  thanks  him  for  it  in 
terms  that  fall  little  short  of  ecstacy. 

But  attached  as  Franklin  was  to  his  sister  he  did  not 
hesitate  to  reprove  her  when  reproof  was  in  his  judgment 
necessary.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  not  caring  enough  for 
a  person  to  reprove  him.  "It  was  not  kind  in  you,"  he 
wrote  to  her  on  one  occasion,  "when  your  sister  com- 
mended good  works,  to  suppose  she  intended  it  a  reproach 
to  you.  It  was  very  far  from  her  thoughts."  His 
language  was  still  more  outspoken  on  another  occasion 
when  Jane  wished  him  to  oust  a  member  of  the  Franklin 
connection,  with  whom  she  was  at  odds,  from  the  Post 
Office  to  make  a  place  for  Benny. 

And  now  [he  said]  as  to  what  you  propose  for  Benny,  I 
believe  he  may  be,  as  you  say,  well  enough  qualified  for  it; 
and,  when  he  appears  to  be  settled,  if  a  vacancy  should  happen, 
it  is  very  probable  he  may  be  thought  of  to  supply  it ;  but  it  is 
a  rule  with  me  not  to  remove  any  officer,  that  behaves  well, 
keeps  regular  accounts,  and  pays  duly;  and  I  think  the  rule  is 
founded  on  reason  and  justice.  I  have  not  shown  any  back- 
wardness to  assist  Benny,  where  it  could  be  done  without 


298       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

injuring  another.  But  if  my  friends  require  of  me  to  gratify- 
not  only  their  inclinations,  but  their  resentments,  they  expect 
too  much  of  me.  Above  all  things  I  dislike  family  quarrels, 
and,  when  they  happen  among  my  relations,  nothing  gives 
me  more  pain.  If  I  were  to  set  myself  up  as  a  judge  of  those 
subsisting  between  you  and  brother's  widow  and  children,  how 
unqualified  must  I  be,  at  this  distance,  to  determine  rightly, 
especially  having  heard  but  one  side.  They  always  treated 
me  with  friendly  and  affectionate  regard;  you  have  done 
the  same.  What  can  I  say  between  you,  but  that  I  wish  you 
were  reconciled,  and  that  I  will  love  that  side  best,  that  is 
most  ready  to  forgive  and  oblige  the  other?  You  will  be 
angry  with  me  here,  for  putting  you  and  them  too  much  upon 
a  footing;  but  I  shall  nevertheless  be,  dear  sister,  your  truly 
affectionate  brother. 

Nor  did  he  attempt  to  disguise  his  real  feelings  in  a 
letter  which  he  wrote  to  Jane  near  the  end  of  his  life  in 
which  he  told  her  that  her  son-in-law,  Collas,  who  kept  a 
store  in  Carolina,  had  wished  to  buy  some  goods  on  credit 
at  Philadelphia,  but  could  not  do  it  without  his  recom- 
mendation, which  he  could  not  give  without  making  him- 
self pecuniarily  liable;  and  that  he  was  not  inclined  to  do, 
having  no  opinion  either  of  the  honesty  and  punctuality 
of  the  people,  with  whom  Collas  proposed  to  traffic,  or 
of  his  skill  and  acuteness  in  merchandizing.  This  he 
wrote,  he  declared,  merely  to  apologize  for  any  seeming 
unkindness.  The  unkindness  was  but  seeming  indeed; 
for  the  letter  also  contained  these  solicitous  words: 

You  always  tell  me  that  you  live  comfortably;  but  I  some- 
times suspect  that  you  may  be  too  unwilling  to  acquaint  me 
with  any  of  your  Difficulties  from  an  Apprehension  of  giving 
me  Pain.  I  wish  you  would  let  me  know  precisely  your 
Situation,  that  I  may  better  proportion  my  Assistance  to 
your  Wants.  Have  you  any  Money  at  Interest,  and  what 
does  it  produce?  Or  do  you  do  some  kind  of  Business  for  a 
Living? 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  299 

Jane  seems  to  have  maintained  her  good  humor  in  the 
face  of  every  timely  reproof  of  her  brother,  and  other  than 
timely  reproofs,  we  may  be  sure,  there  were  none.  Indeed, 
she  worshipped  him  so  devoutly — devotedly  is  too  feeble 
an  adverb — that  there  was  no  need  for  her  at  any  time  in 
her  relations  with  him  to  fall  back  upon  her  good  nature. 
A  few  extracts  from  her  letters  to  Franklin  will  show  how 
deeply  the  love  and  gratitude  excited  by  her  brother's 
ceaseless  beneficence  sank  into  her  heart. 

I  am  amazed  beyond  measure  [she  wrote  to  Deborah,  when 
she  heard  of  the  threatened  attack  on  Franklin's  house] 
that  your  house  was  threatened  in  the  tumult.  I  thought 
there  had  been  none  among  you  would  proceed  to  such  a 
length  to  persecute  a  man  merely  for  being  the  best  of  char- 
acters, and  really  deserving  good  from  the  hand  and  tongue 
of  all  his  fellow  creatures.  .  .  .  What  a  wretched  world  would 
this  be  if  the  vile  of  mankind  had  no  laws  to  restrain  them. 

Additional  edge  to  the  indignation,  expressed  in  this 
letter,  was  doubtless  given  by  the  fact  that  the  writer  had 
just  received  from  her  brother,  who  was  then  in  London,  a 
box  containing,  among  other  things,  "a  printed  cotton 
gown,  a  quilted  coat,  a  bonnet,  a  cap,  and  some  ribbons" 
for  herself  and  each  of  her  daughters. 

It  is  made  manifest  by  other  letters  than  this  that  her 
brother's  benevolence  towards  her  and  her  family  were 
quite  as  active  when  he  was  abroad  as  when  he  was  at 
home.  In  1779,  she  tells  him  that,  in  a  letter  from  him 
to  her,  he,  like  himself,  does  all  for  her  that  the  most 
affectionate  brother  can  be  desired  or  expected  to  do. 

And  though  [she  further  said]  I  feel  myself  full  of  gratitude 
for  your  generosity,  the  conclusion  of  your  letter  affects  me 
more,  where  you  say  you  wish  we  may  spend  our  last  days 
together.  O  my  dear  brother,  if  this  could  be  accomplished, 
it  would  give  me  more  joy  than  anything  on  this  side 
Heaven  could  possibly  do.     I  feel  the  want  of  a  suitable  con- 


300       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

versation —  I  have  but  little  here.  I  think  I  could  assume  more 
freedom  with  you  now,  and  convince  you  of  my  affection  for 
you.  I  have  had  time  to  reflect  and  see  my  error  in  that 
respect.  I  suffered  my  diffidence  and  the  awe  of  your  superior- 
ity to  prevent  the  familiarity  I  might  have  taken  with  you, 
and  ought,  and  (which)  your  kindness  to  me  might  have 
convinced  me  would  be  acceptable. 

A  little  later  she  wrote: 

Your  very  affectionate  and  tender  care  of  me  all  along  in 
life  excites  my  warmest  gratitude,  which  I  cannot  even  think 
on  without  tears.  What  manifold  blessings  I  enjoy  beyond 
many  of  my  worthy  acquaintance,  who  have  been  driven 
from  their  home,  lost  their  interest,  and  some  have  the  addition 
of  lost  health,  and  one  the  grievous  torment  of  a  cancer,  and 
no  kind  brother  to  support  her,  while  I  am  kindly  treated  by 
all  about  me,  and  ample  provision  made  for  me  when  I  have 
occasion. 

As  heartfelt  was  another  letter  written  by  her  while 
he  was  still  in  France : 

Believe  me,  my  dear  brother,  your  writing  to  me  gives  me 
so  much  pleasure  that  the  great,  the  very  great  presents  you 
have  sent  me  are  but  a  secondary  joy.  I  have  been  very  sick 
this  winter  at  my  daughter's;  kept  my  chamber  six  weeks, 
but  had  a  sufficiency  for  my  supply  of  everything  that  could 
be  a  comfort  to  me  of  my  own,  before  I  received  any  intima- 
tion of  the  great  bounty  from  your  hand,  which  your  letter 
has  conveyed  to  me,  for  I  have  not  been  lavish  of  what  I 
before  possessed,  knowing  sickness  and  misfortunes  might 
happen,  and  certainly  old  age;  but  I  shall  now  be  so  rich  that 
I  may  indulge  in  a  small  degree  a  propensity  to  help  some 
poor  creatures  who  have  not  the  blessing  I  enjoy.  My  good 
fortune  came  to  me  altogether  to  comfort  me  inmyweak  state', 
for  as  I  had  been  so  unlucky  as  not  to  receive  the  letter  you 
sent  me  through  your  son  Bache's  hands,  though  he  informs 
me  he  forwarded  it  immediately.  His  letter  with  a  draft  for 
twenty  five  guineas  came  to  my  hand  just  before  yours,  which  I 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  301 

have  received,  and  cannot  find  expression  suitable  to  acknowl- 
edge my  gratitude  how  I  am  by  my  dear  brother  enabled  to 
live  at  ease  in  my  old  age  (after  a  life  of  care,  labor,  and 
anxiety)  without  which  I  must  have  been  miserable. 

Most  touching  of  all  are  the  words  which  she  addressed 
to  her  brother  shortly  before  his  death,  "Who  that  know 
and  love  you  can  bear  the  thought  of  surviving  you  in 
this  gloomy  world?"  Even  after  his  death,  his  goodness 
continued  to  shield  her  from  want,  for  by  his  will  he 
devised  to  her  absolutely  the  house  in  Unity  Street,  Bos- 
ton, in  which  she  lived,  and  bequeathed  to  her  an  annuity 
of  sixty  pounds.  By  his  will,  he  also  bequeathed  to  her 
children,  grandchildren  and  great-grandchildren,  living 
at  the  time  of  his  decease,  in  equal  shares,  fifty  pounds 
sterling;  the  same  amount  that  he  bequeathed  to  the 
descendants  living  at  that  time  of  his  brother  Samuel, 
his  sister  Anne  Harris,  his  brother  James,  his  sister  Sarah 
and  his  sister  Lydia,  respectively. 

As  we  have  seen,  Franklin's  feelings  about  Deborah's 
relatives  were  hardly  less  cordial  than  his  feelings  about 
his  own.  In  addition  to  his  mother-in-law,  Mrs.  Read, 
and  Brother  John  Read  and  Sister  Read,  and  Cousin 
Debbey,  and  young  cousin  Johnny  Read,  two  other 
kinsmen  of  Deborah,  Joseph  Read  and  James  Read  are 
mentioned  in  his  letters.  Indeed,  at  one  time  he  even 
contrived  to  ward  off  the  Franklins,  Mecoms  and  Daven- 
ports from  the  Post  Office  long  enough  to  appoint  Joseph 
to  the  Postmastership  at  Philadelphia;  but  James  was  so 
unfortunate  as  to  rub  against  one  of  the  most  highly 
sensitive  surfaces  of  his  disposition.  In  a  letter  to  him, 
Franklin  says,  "Your  visits  never  had  but  one  thing  dis- 
agreeable in  them,  that  is,  they  were  always  too  short"; 
but,  in  a  later  letter,  he  assails  Read  fiercely  for  surrepti- 
tiously obtaining  a  judgment  against  Robert  Grace,  one  of 
the  orginal  members  of  the  Junto,  and  produces  a  power 


302       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

of  attorney  to  himself  from  William  Strahan,  authorizing 
him  to  recover  a  large  sum  of  money  that  Read  owed 
Strahan.  "Fortune's  wheel  is  often  turning,"  he  grimly 
reminds  Read.  The  whole  letter  is  written  with  a  degree 
of  asperity  that  Franklin  rarely  exhibited  except  when  his 
sense  of  injustice  was  highly  inflamed,  and  the  circumstan- 
ces, under  which  Read  secured  the  judgment,  the  "little 
charges,"  that  he  had  cunningly  accumulated  on  it,  and 
the  cordial  affection  of  Franklin  for  Grace  would  appear  to 
have  fully  justified  Franklin's  stern  rebuke  and  exultant 
production  of  Strahan' s  power  of  attorney.  But  every- 
thing, it  must  be  confessed,  becomes  just  a  little  clearer 
when  we  learn  from  a  subsequent  letter  of  Franklin  to 
Strahan  that,  before  he  received  Strahan's  power  of 
attorney  and  account,  there  had  been  a  misunderstanding 
between  Read  and  himself, 

occasion'd  by  his  endeavouring  to  get  a  small  Office  from 
me  (Clerk  to  the  Assembly)  which  I  took  the  more  amiss, 
as  we  had  always  been  good  Friends,  and  the  Office  could 
not  have  been  of  much  Service  to  him,  the  Salary  being  small; 
but  valuable  to  me,  as  a  means  of  securing  the  Public  Busi- 
ness to  our  Printing  House. 

The  reader  will  remember  that  Franklin  reserved  the 
right  to  make  full  reprisals  when  anyone  undertook  to 
dislodge  him  from  a  public  office. 

Nor,  as  has  been  apparent  enough,  was  the  interest  of 
Franklin  limited  to  contemporary  Franklins.  If  he  had 
been  a  descendant  of  one  of  the  high-bred  Washingtons 
of  Northamptonshire — the  shire  to  which  the  lineage  of 
George  Washington,  as  well  as  his  own,  ran  back — he 
could  not  have  been  more  curious  about  his  descent  than 
he  was.  f  ■  I  have  ever  had  pleasure, "  the  opening  sentence 
of  the  Autobiography  declares,  "in  obtaining  any  little 
anecdotes  of  my  ancestors."  From  notes,  placed  in  his 
hands  by  his  uncle  Benjamin,  he  learned  some  interesting 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  303 

particulars  about  his  English  forbears.  They  had  resided 
in  the  village  of  Ecton,  in  Northamptonshire,  on  the 
great  northern  turnpike,  sixty-six  miles  from  London,  for 
certainly  three  hundred  years,  on  a  freehold  of  about 
thirty  acres,  and  the  eldest  son  of  the  family  had  always 
been  bred  to  the  trade  of  a  blacksmith.1  Perhaps  as 
Parton  conjectures,  some  swart  Franklin  at  the  ancestral 
forge  on  the  little  freehold  may  have  tightened  a  rivet  in 
the  armor,  or  replaced  a  shoe  upon  the  horse,  of  a  Wash- 
ington, or  doffed  his  cap  to  a  Washington  riding  past. 
From  the  registers,  examined  by  Franklin,  when  he  visited 
Ecton,  which  ended  with  the  year  1755,  he  discovered 
that  he  was  the  youngest  son  of  the  youngest  son  for  five 
generations  back. 

One  of  his  letters  to  Deborah  contained  much  agreeable 
information  about  his  and  her  English  relations,  which  he 
collected  at  this  time.  After  leaving  Cambridge,  where 
his  vanity,  he  said,  had  been  not  a  little  gratified  by  the 
particular  regard  shown  him  by  the  chancellor  and  the 
vice-chancellor  of  the  university  and  the  heads  of  colleges, 
he  found  on  inquiry  at  Wellingborough  that  Mary  Fisher, 
the  daughter  and  only  child  of  Thomas  Franklin,  his 
father's  eldest  brother,  was  still  living.  He  knew  that 
she  had  lived  at  Wellingborough,  and  had  been  married 
there  about  fifty  years  before  to  one  Richard  Fisher,  a 
grazier  and  tanner,  but,  supposing  that  she  and  her  hus- 
band were  both  dead,  he  had  inquired  for  their  posterity. 

x  In  sending  a  MS.  to  Edward  Everett,  which  he  placed  in  the  library 
of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  Thomas  Carlyle  said:  "The  poor 
manuscript  is  an  old  Tithes-Book  of  the  parish  of  Ecton,  in  Northampton- 
shire, from  about  1640  to  1700,  and  contains,  I  perceive,  various  scattered 
faint  indications  of  the  civil  war  time,  which  are  not  without  interest; 
but  the  thing  which  should  raise  it  above  all  tithe-books  yet  heard  of  is, 
that  it  contains  actual  notices,  in  that  fashion,  of  the  ancestors  of  Ben- 
jamin Franklin — blacksmiths  in  that  parish!  Here  they  are — their  forge- 
hammers  yet  going — renting  so  many  '  yard  lands '  of  Northamptonshire 
Church-soil — keeping  so  many  sheep,  etc.,  etc., — little  conscious  that  one 
of  the  demi-gods  was  about  to  proceed  out  of  them." 


304       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

I  was  directed  [he  says]  to  their  house,  and  we  found  them 
both  alive,  but  weak  with  age,  very  glad  however  to  see  us. 
She  seems  to  have  been  a  very  smart,  sensible  woman.  They 
are  wealthy,  have  left  off  business,  and  live  comfortably. 
They  have  had  only  one  child,  a  daughter,  who  died,  when 
about  thirty  years  of  age,  unmarried.  She  gave  me  several 
of  my  uncle  Benjamin's  letters  to  her,  and  acquainted  me 
where  the  other  remains  of  the  family  lived,  of  which  I  have, 
since  my  return  to  London,  found  out  a  daughter  of  my  father's 
only  sister,  very  old,  and  never  married.  She  is  a  good,  clever 
woman,  but  poor,  though  vastly  contented  with  her  situation, 
and  very  cheerful.  The  others  are  in  different  parts  of  the 
country.  I  intend  to  visit  them,  but  they  were  too  much 
out  of  our  tour  in  that  journey. 

This  was  in  1758.  Mary  Fisher  had  good  reason  to 
be  weak  with  age;  for  this  letter  states  that  she  was  five 
years  older  than  Franklin's  sister  Dowse,  and  remembered 
her  going  away  with  Franklin's  father  and  his  first  wife 
and  two  other  children  to  New  England  about  the  year 
1685,  or  some  seventy-three  years  before  Franklin's 
visit  to  Wellingborough. 

"  Where  are  the  old  men? 
I  who  have  seen  much, 
Such  have  I  never  seen." 

Only  the  truly  gray  earth,  humming,  as  it  revolves  on  its 
axis,  the  derisive  song,  heard  by  the  fine  ear  of  Emerson, 
could  ask  this  question,  unrebuked  by  such  a  stretch  of 
human  memory  as  that.  The  letter  then  goes  on  to  say 
that  from  Wellingborough  the  writer  passed  to  Ecton, 
about  three  or  four  miles  away,  where  Franklin's  father 
was  born,  and  where  his  father,  grandfather,  and  great- 
grandfather had  lived,  and  how  many  of  the  family  before 
them  they  knew  not. 

We  went  first  [Franklin  tells  us]  to  see  the  old  house  and 
grounds;  they  came  to  Mr.  Fisher  with  his  wife,  and,  after 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  305 

letting  them  for  some  years,  finding  his  rent  something  ill 
paid,  he  sold  them.  The  land  is  now  added  to  another  farm, 
and  a  school  kept  in  the  house.  It  is  a  decayed  old  stone 
building,  but  still  known  by  the  name  of  the  Franklin  House. 
Thence  we  went  to  visit  the  rector  of  the  parish,  who  lives 
close  by  the  church,  a  very  ancient  building.  He  entertained 
us  very  kindty,  and  showed  us  the  old  church  register,  in 
which  were  the  births,  marriages,  and  burials  of  our  ancestors 
for  two  hundred  years,  as  early  as  his  book  began.  His  wife,  a 
goodnatured,  chatty  old  lady  (grand-daughter  of  the  famous 
Archdeacon  Palmer,  who  formerly  had  that  parish,  and  lived 
there)  remembered  a  great  deal  about  the  family;  carried  us  out 
into  the  churchyard,  and  showed  us  several  of  their  grave- 
stones, which  were  so  covered  with  moss,  that  we  could  not 
read  the  letters,  till  she  ordered  a  hard  brush  and  basin  of 
water,  with  which  Peter  (Franklin's  negro  servant)  scoured 
them  clean,  and  then  Billy  (William  Franklin)  copied  them. 
She  entertained  and  diverted  us  highly  with  stories  of  Thomas 
Franklin,  Mrs.  Fisher's  father,  who  was  a  conveyancer, 
something  of  a  lawyer,  clerk  of  the  county  courts  and  clerk 
to  the  Archdeacon  in  his  visitations;  a  very  leading  man  in  all 
county  affairs,  and  much  employed  in  public  business.  He 
set  on  foot  a  subscription  for  erecting  chimes  in  their  steeple, 
and  completed  it,  and  we  heard  them  play.  He  found  out 
an  easy  method  of  saving  their  village  meadows  from  being 
drowned,  as  they  used  to  be  sometimes  by  the  river,  which 
method  is  still  in  being;  but,  when  first  proposed,  nobody 
could  conceive  how  it  could  be;  "but  however,"  they  said, 
"if  Franklin  says  he  knows  how  to  do  it,  it  will  be  done." 
His  advice  and  opinion  were  sought  for  on  all  occasions,  by  all 
sorts  of  people,  and  he  was  looked  upon,  she  said,  by  some,  as 
something  of  a  conjuror.  He  died  just  four  years  before  I 
was  born,  on  the  same  day  of  the  same  month. 


The  likeness  between  Thomas  and  his  nephew  may 
have  been  insufficient  under  any  circumstances  to  justly 
suggest  the  thought  of  a  metempsychosis  to  William 
Franklin,  but  Thomas  does  seem  to  have  been  a  kind  of 

VOL.  1—20 


306       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

tentative  effort  upon  the  part  of  Nature  to  create  a 
Benjamin  Franklin. 

The  letter  then  states  that,  after  leaving  Ecton,  the 
party  finally  arrived  at  Birmingham  where  they  were  soon 
successful  in  looking  up  Deborah's  and  cousin  Wilkin- 
son's and  cousin  Cash's  relations.  First,  they  found  one 
of  the  Cashes,  and  he  went  with  them  to  Rebecca  Flint's 
where  they  saw  her  and  her  husband.  She  was  a  turner, 
and  he  a  button-maker;  they  were  childless  and  glad  to  see 
any  person  that  knew  their  sister  Wilkinson.  They  told 
their  visitors  what  letters  they  had  received  from  America, 
and  even  assured  them — such  are  the  short  and  simple 
annals  of  the  poor — that  they  had  out  of  respect  pre- 
served a  keg  in  which  a  gift  of  sturgeon  from  America  had 
reached  them.  Then  follow  certain  details  about  other 
members  of  this  family  connection,  commonplace  enough, 
however,  to  reconcile  us  to  the  fact  that  they  have  been 
cut  short  by  the  mordant  tooth  of  time  which  has  not 
spared  the  remainder  of  the  letter. 

On  his  second  mission  to  England,  Franklin  paid  an- 
other visit  to  these  Birmingham  relations  of  his  wife,  and 
was  in  that  city  for  several  days.  The  severest  test  of  a 
good  husband  is  to  ask  whether  he  loves  his  wife's  rela- 
tions as  much  as  his  own.  To  even  this  test  Franklin 
appears  to  have  been  equal. 

Sally  Franklin,  the  daughter  of  Thomas  Franklin,  of 
Lutterworth,  a  second  cousin  of  Franklin,  also  flits  through 
the  correspondence  between  Deborah  and  her  husband. 
When  she  was  about  thirteen  years  of  age,  her  father 
brought  her  to  London  to  see  Franklin,  and  Mrs.  Steven- 
son persuaded  him  to  leave  the  child  under  her  care  for  a 
little  schooling  and  improvement,  while  Franklin  was  off 
on  one  of  his  periodical  tours. 

When  I  return'd  [the  latter  wrote  to  Deborah]  I  found  her 
indeed  much  improv'd,  and  grown  a  fine  Girl.     She  is  sensible, 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  307 

and  of  a  sweet,  obliging  Temper,  but  is  now  ill  of  a  violent 
Fever,  and  I  doubt  we  shall  lose  her,  which  particularly  afflicts 
Mrs.  Stevenson,  not  only  as  she  has  contracted  a  great  Affec- 
tion for  the  Child,  but  as  it  was  she  that  persuaded  her  Father 
to  leave  her  there. 

Sally,  however,  settled  all  doubts  by  getting  well  and 
furnishing  future  material  for  Franklin's  letters  to  Deborah. 
One  letter  tells  Deborah  that  Sally's  father  was  very 
desirous  that  Franklin  should  take  her  to  America  with 
him;  another  pays  the  compliment  to  Sally,  who  was  at 
the  time  in  the  country  with  her  father,  of  saying  that 
she  is  a  very  good  girl;  another  thanks  Deborah  for  her 
kind  attitude  toward  her  husband's  partially-formed 
resolution  of  bringing  Sally  over  to  America  with  him; 
another  announces  that  Sally  is  again  with  Mrs.  Stevenson ; 
and  still  another  doubtless  relieved  Deborah  of  no  little 
uncertainty  of  mind  by  informing  her  that  Sally  was 
about  to  be  married  to  a  farmer's  son.  "I  shall  miss 
her,"  comments  Franklin,  "as  she  is  nimble-footed  and 
willing  to  run  of  Errands  and  wait  upon  me,  and  has  been 
very  serviceable  to  me  for  some  Years,  so  that  I  have  not 
kept  a  Man." 

Among  Franklin's  papers,  too,  was  found  at  his  death  a 
letter  from  his  father  to  him,  beginning  "Loving  Son," 
which  also  makes  some  valuable  contributions  to  our 
knowledge  of  Franklin's  forefathers. 

As  to  the  original  of  our  name,  there  is  various  opinions 
[says  Josiah];  some  say  that  it  came  from  a  sort  of  title,  of 
which  a  book  that  you  bought  when  here  gives  a  lively  account, 
some  think  we  are  of  a  French  extract,  which  was  formerly 
called  Franks;  some  of  a  free  line,  a  line  free  from  that  vassalage 
which  was  common  to  subjects  in  days  of  old;  some  from  a 
bird  of  long  red  legs.  Your  uncle  Benjamin  made  inquiry  of 
one  skilled  in  heraldry,  who  told  him  there  is  two  coats  of 
armor,  one  belonging  to  the  Franklins  of  the  North,  and  one 


308       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

to  the  Franklins  of  the  west.  However,  our  circumstances 
have  been  such  as  that  it  hath  hardly  been  worth  while  to 
concern  ourselves  much  about  these  things  any  farther  than  to 
tickle  the  fancy  a  little. 

Josiah  then  has  a  word  to  say  about  his  great-grand- 
father, the  Franklin  who  kept  his  Bible  under  a  joint 
stool  during  the  reign  of  Bloody  Mary,  and  his  grand- 
father.    The  former,  he  says,  in  his  travels 

went  upon  liking  to  a  taylor;  but  he  kept  such  a  stingy  house, 
that  he  left  him  and  travelled  farther,  and  came  to  a  smith's 
house,  and  coming  on  a  fasting  day,  being  in  popish  times,  he 
did  not  like  there  the  first  day;  the  next  morning  the  servant 
was  called  up  at  five  in  the  morning,  but  after  a  little  time 
came  a  good  toast  and  good  beer,  and  he  found  good  house- 
keeping there;  he  served  and  learned  the  trade  of  a  smith. 

Josiah's  grandfather,  the  letter  tells  us,  was  a  smith 
also,  and  settled  in  Ecton,'  and  "was  imprisoned  a  year 
and  a  day  on  suspicion  of  his  being  the  author  of  some 
poetry*  that  touched  the  character  of  some  great  man." 
An  ancestry  that  could  boast  one  sturdy  Tubal  Cain, 
ready,  though  the  fires  of  Smithfield  were  brightly  burn- 
ing, to  hazard  his  life  for  his  religious  convictions,  and 
another,  with  letters  and  courage  enough  to  lampoon  a 
great  man  in  England  in  the  sixteenth  or  the  seventeenth 
century,  is  an  ancestry  that  was  quite  worthy  of  investiga- 
tion. It  at  least  tickles  the  fancy  a  little,  to  use  Josiah's 
phrase,  to  imagine  that  the  flame  of  the  Ecton  forge  lit 
up,  generation  after  generation,  the  face  of  some  brawny, 
honest  toiler,  not  unlike  the  village  blacksmith,  whose 
rugged  figure  and  manly,  simple-hearted,  God-fearing 
nature  are  portrayed  with  so  much  dignity  and  beauty 
in  the  well-known  verses  of  Longfellow.  Be  this  as  it 
may,  the  humble  lot  of  neither  ancestral  nor  contemporary 
Franklins  was  a  source  of  mortification  to  Poor  Richard 


Franklin's  Family  Relations  309 

even  after  the  popularity  of  his  Almanac  had  brought 
in  a  pair  of  shoes,  two  new  shifts,  and  a  new  warm  petti- 
coat to  his  wife,  and  to  him  a  second-hand  coat,  so  good 
that  he  was  no  longer  ashamed  to  go  to  town  or  be  seen 
there. 

"He  that  has  neither  fools  nor  beggars  among  his 
kindred,  is  the  son  of  a  thunder  gust, "  said  Poor  Richard. 


CHAPTER  V 
FranKlin's  American  Friends 

THE  friends  mentioned  in  the  correspondence  between 
Franklin  and  Deborah  were  only  some  of  the 
many  friends  with  whom  Franklin  was  blessed 
during  the  course  of  his  life.  He  had  the  same  faculty  for 
inspiring  friendship  that  a  fine  woman  has  for  inspiring 
love.  In  reading  his  general  correspondence,  few  things 
arrest  our  attention  more  sharply  than  the  number  of 
affectionate  and  admiring  intimates,  whose  lives  were  in 
one  way  or  another  interwoven  with  his  own,  and,  over 
and  over  again,  in  reading  this  correspondence,  our  atten- 
tion is  unexpectedly  drawn  for  a  moment  to  some  cherished 
friend  of  his,  of  whom  there  is  scarcely  a  hint  elsewhere  in 
his  writings.  v 

It  was  from  real  considerations  of  practical  convenience 
that  he  sometimes  avoided  the  serious  task  of  enumerating 
all  the  friends,  to  whom  he  wished  to  be  remembered,  by 
sending  his  love  to  " all  Philadelphia "  or  "all  Pennsyl- 
vania." 

A  dozen  of  his  friends,  as  we  have  stated,  accompanied 
him  as  far  as  Trenton,  when  he  was  on  his  way  to  New 
York  to  embark  upon  his  first  mission  abroad  in  1757. 
A  cavalcade  of  three  hundred  of  them  accompanied  him 
for  sixteen  miles  to  his  ship,  when  he  was  on  his  way  down 
the  Delaware  on  his  second  mission  abroad  in  1764. 

Remember  me  affectionately  to  all  our  good  Friends  who 
contributed  by  their  Kindness  to  make  my  Voyage  com- 

310 


Franklin's  American  Friends  311 

fort  able  [he  wrote  to  Deborah  a  little  later  from  London]. 
To  Mr.  Roberts,  Mrs.  Thompson,  Mrs.  Smith,  Mra.  Potts, 
Mra.  Shewell;  Messre.  Whartons,  Capt.  Falkner,  Brothers  & 
Sisters  Reads  &  Franklins,  Cousin  Davenport,  and  every- 
body. 

When  he  returned  from  England  in  1762,  he  was  able 
to  write  to  Strahan  with  a  flush  of  pardonable  exultation 
that  he  had  had  the  happiness  to  find  that  Dr.  Smiths 
reports  of  the  diminutions  of  his  friends  were  all  false. 
"My  house,' '  he  said,  "has  been  full  of  a  succession  of 
them  from  morning  to  night,  ever  since  my  arrival, 
congratulating  me  on  my  return  with  the  utmost  cordiality 
and  affection."  And,  several  years  later,  when  the  news 
reached  Philadelphia  that  he  was  again  safely  in  England, 
the  bells  rang  until  near  midnight,  and  libations  were 
poured  out  for  his  health,  success  and  every  other  happi- 
ness. "Even  your  old  friend  Hugh  Roberts/'  said  Cad- 
wallader  Evans,  who  gave  this  information  to  Franklin, 
"stayed  with  us  till  eleven  o'clock,  which  you  know  was 
a  little  out  of  his  common  road,  and  gave  us  many  curious 
anecdotes  within  the  compass  of  your  forty  years  ac- 
quaintance." This  rejoicing,  of  course,  was,  to  a  consid- 
erable degree,  the  result  of  political  fermentation,  and,  if 
we  say  nothing  of  other  demonstrations,  like  the  flourish 
of  naked  swords,  which  angered  the  Proprietary  so  deeply, 
and  made  Franklin  himself  feel  just  a  little  foolish,  it  is 
only  because  it  is  impossible  to  declare  how  far  these 
demonstrations  were  the  tributes  of  personal  friendship 
rather  than  of  public  gratitude.  In  a  letter  to  Doctor 
Samuel  Johnson,  of  Connecticut,  Franklin  tells  him  that 
he  will  shortly  print  proposals  for  publishing  the  Doctor's 
pieces  by  subscription,  and  disperse  them  among  his 
friends  "along  the  continent."  This  meant  much  to  an 
author,  coming  as  it  did  from  a  man,  of  whom  it  might 
perhaps  be  said  that  he  could  have  travelled  all  the  way 


312       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

from  Boston  to  Virginia  without  ever  being  at  a  loss  for 
the  hospitable  roof  of  a  friend  to  shelter  him  at  night. 

Nowhere  outside  of  Pennsylvania  did  Franklin  have 
warmer  friends  than  in  New  England,  the  land  of  his  birth. 
He  fled  from  Boston  in  1723,  and  returned  to  it  on  a  brief 
visit  in  1724.  Aside  from  other  occasional  returns,  he 
afterwards  revisited  it  at  regular  intervals  of  ten  years  in 
J733»  J743>  x753  and  x763-  Many  pleasant  hours  were 
spent  by  him  among  his  wayside  friends  in  New  England 
on  those  postal  and  other  journeys  which  took  him  within 
her  borders. 

I  left  New  England  slowly,  and  with  great  reluctance 
[he  wrote  to  his  friend  Catherine  Ray,  afterwards  Greene, 
at  Block  Island  in  1755].  Short  day's  journeys,  and  loitering 
visits  on  the  road,  for  three  or  four  weeks,  manifested  my 
unwillingness  to  quit  a  country,  in  which  I  drew  my  first 
breath,  spent  my  earliest  and  most  pleasant  days,  and'  had 
now  received  so  many  fresh  marks  of  the  people's  goodness  and 
benevolence,  in  the  kind  and  affectionate  treatment  I  had 
everywhere  met  with.  I  almost  forgot  I  had  a  home,  till  I 
was  more  than  half  way  towards  it,  till  I  had,  one  by  one, 
parted  with  all  my  New  England  friends,  and  was  got  into 
the  western  borders  of  Connecticut,  among  mere  strangers. 
Then,  like  an  old  man,  who,  having  buried  all  he  loved  in  this 
world,  begins  to  think  of  heaven,  I  began  to  think  of  and 
wish  for  home. 

The  only  drawback  to  the  pleasure  of  his  New  England 
journeys  was  the  vile  roads  of  the  time.  In  a  letter  to 
John  Foxcroft,  in  the  year  1773,  in  which  he  refers  to  a 
fall  which  Foxcroft  had  experienced,  he  says,  "I  have  had. 
three  of  those  Squelchers  in  different  Journeys,  and 
never  desire  a  fourth."  Two  of  these  squelchers,  we  know, 
befell  him  on  the  rough  roads  of  New  England,  in  the  year 
1763;  for,  in  a  letter  from  Boston  to  his  friend  Mrs. 
Catherine  Greene  (formerly  Ray) ,  of  that  year,  he  writes 
to  her  that  he  is  almost  ashamed  to  say  that  he  has  had 


Franklin's  American  Friends  313 

another  fall,  and  put  his  shoulder  out.  "Do  you  think, 
after  this, "  he  added,  "that  even  your  kindest  invitations 
and  Mr.  Greene's  can  prevail  with  me  to  venture  myself 
again  on  such  roads?"  In  August  of  the  same  year, 
Franklin  informed  Strahan  that  he  had  already  travelled 
eleven  hundred  and  forty  miles  on  the  American  Continent 
since  April,  and  that  he  would  make  six  hundred  and  forty 
more  before  he  saw  home.  To  this  and  other  postal  tours 
of  inspection  he  owed  in  part  those  friends  "along  the 
continent,"  to  whom  he  proposed  to  appeal  in  Dr.  John- 
son's behalf,  as  well  as  that  unrivalled  familiarity  with 
American  colonial  conditions,  which  stands  out  in  such 
clear  relief  in  his  works.  On  one  occasion,  the  accidents 
by  flood  and  field,  to  which  he  was  exposed  on  his.  American 
journeys,  during  the  colonial  era,  resulted  in  a  tie,  which, 
while  not  the  tie  of  friendship,  proved  to  his  cost  to  be 
even  more  lasting  than  that  tie  sometimes  is.  When  he 
was  about  forty-three  years  of  age,  a  canoe,  in  which 
he  was  a  passenger,  was  upset  near  Staten  Island,  while 
he  was  endeavoring  to  board  a  stage-boat  bound  for  New 
York.  He  was  in  no  danger,  as  he  said  to  a  friend  forty 
years  afterwards  when  recalling  the  incident,  for,  besides 
being  near  the  shore,  he  could  swim  like  a  duck  or  a 
Bermudian.  But,  unfortunately  for  him,  there  was  a 
Jew  on  the  stage-boat  who  chose  to  believe  that  he  had 
saved  Franklin's  life  by  inducing  the  stage-boat  to  stop, 
and  take  Franklin  in.  As  far  as  the  latter  could  learn, 
he  was  not  more  indebted  to  the  Jew  than  to  the  Jew's 
fellow-passengers  for  being  plucked  from  an  element 
which  he  never  wearied  of  asserting  is  not  responsible 
even  for  bad  colds,  and,  in  return  for  the  consideration, 
that  he  had  received  from  the  stage-boat,  he  dined  all  its 
passengers  to  their  general  satisfaction,  when  he  reached 
New  York,  at  "The  Tavern " ;  but  the  Jew  had  no  mind  to 
allow  the  benefaction  to  sink  out  of  sight  for  the  number 
of  the  benefactors. 


314       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

This  Hayes  [Franklin  wrote  to  the  friend,  who  had  for- 
warded to  him  a  letter  from  Hayes'  widow]  never  saw  me 
afterwards,  at  New  York,  or  Brunswick,  or  Philada  that  he 
did  not  dun  me  for  Money  on  the  Pretence  of  his  being  poor, 
and  having  been  so  happy  as  to  be  Instrumental  in  saving 
my  Life,  which  was  really  in  no  Danger.  In  this  way  he  got 
of  me  some  times  a  double  Joannes,  sometimes  a  Spanish 
Doubloon,  and  never  less;  how  much  in  the  whole  I  do  not 
know,  having  kept  no  Account  of  it ;  but  it  must  have  been  a 
very  considerable  Sum;  and  he  never  incurr'd  any  Risque, 
nor  was  at  any  Trouble  in  my  Behalf,  I  have  long  since  thought 
him  well  paid  for  any  little  expence  of  Humanity  he  might 
have  felt  on  the  Occasion.  He  seems,  however,  to  have  left 
me  to  his  Widow  as  part  of  her  Dowry. 

This  was  about  as  far  as  the  kindly  nature  of  Franklin 
ever  went  in  dealing  with  a  beggar  or  a  bore. 

'In  New  York  or  New  Jersey,  he  was  little  less  at  home 
than  in  Pennsylvania  or  New  England.  In  a  letter  to 
Deborah  in  1763,  after  telling  her  that  he  had  been  to 
Elizabeth  Town,  where  he  had  found  their  children  re- 
turned from  the  Falls  and  very  well,  he  says,  "The  Cor- 
poration were  to  have  a  Dinner  that  day  at  the  Point  for 
their  Entertainment,  and  prevail'd  on  us  to  stay.  There 
was  all  the  principal  People  &  a  great  many  Ladies." 

As  we  shall  see,  the  foundations  of  his  New  Jersey  friend- 
ships were  laid  very  early.  In  following  him  on  his  jour- 
neys through  Maryland,  we  find  him  entertained  at  the 
country  seats  of  some  of  the  most  prominent  gentlemen 
of  the  Colony,  as  for  instance  at  Colonel  Tasker's  and  at 
Mr.  Milligan's.  He  was  several  times  in  Virginia  in  the 
course  of  his  life,  and  it  is  an  agreeable  thing  to  a  Virginian, 
who  recollects  that  a  Virginian,  Arthur  Lee,  is  to  be 
reckoned  among  the  contentious  "bird  and  beast"  people, 
for  whom  Franklin  had  such  a  dislike,  to  recollect  also 
that  not  only  are  Washington  and  Jefferson  to  be  reckoned 
among  Franklin's  loyal  and  admiring  friends,  but  that, 


Franklin's  American  Friends  315 

after  Franklin  had  been  a  few  days  in  Virginia  at  Mr. 
Hunter's,  he  expressed  his  opinion  of  both  the  country 
and  its  people  in  these  handsome  terms:  "Virginia  is  a 
pleasant  Country,  now  in  full  Spring ;  the  People  extreamly 
obliging  and  polite."  There  can  be  no  better  corrective 
of  the  petty  sectional  spirit,  which  has  been  such  a  blemish 
on  our  national  history,  and  has  excited  so  much  wholly 
unfounded  and  senseless  local  prejudice,  than  to  note 
the  appreciation  which  that  open,  clear-sighted  eye  had 
for  all  that  was  best  in  every  part  of  the  American 
Colonies.  "There  are  brave  Spirits  among  that  People," 
he  said,  when  he  heard  that  the  Virginia  House  of  Bur- 
gesses had  appointed  its  famous  Committee  of  Corre- 
spondence for  the  purpose  of  bringing  the  Colonies 
together  for  their  common  defense.  He  was  never  in 
the  Carolinas  or  Georgia,  we  believe,  though  he  was  for 
a  time  the  Agent  in  England  of  Georgia  as  well  as  other 
Colonies.  But  he  had  enough  friends  in  Charleston,  at 
any  rate,  when  he  was  on  his  first  mission  abroad,  to  write 
to  his  Charleston  correspondent,  Dr.  Alexander  Garden, 
the  eminent  botanist  from  whom  Linnaeus  borrowed  a 
name  for  the  gardenia,  that  he  purposed,  God  willing, 
to  return  by  way  of  Carolina,  when  he  promised  himself 
the  pleasure  of  seeing  and  conversing  with  his  friends  in 
Charleston.  And  to  another  resident  of  Charleston,  Dr. 
John  Lining,  several  highly  interesting  letters  of  his  on 
scientific  subjects  were  written.  For  Henry  Laurens,  of 
South  Carolina,  his  fellow-commissioner  for  the  purpose 
of  negotiating  the  treaty  of  peace  with  Great  Britain,  he 
entertained  a  warm  feeling  of  esteem  and  good  will  which 
was  fully  reciprocated  by  Laurens.  It  was  a  just  re- 
mark of  Laurens  that  Franklin  knew  very  well  how  to 
manage  a  cunning  man,  but  that,  when  he  conversed  or 
treated  with  a  man  of  candor,  there  was  no  man  more 
candid  than  himself.  For  Colonel  John  Laurens,  of  South 
Carolina,  the  son  of  Henry  Laurens,  the  aide  to  Wash- 


316       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

ington,  and  the  intrepid  young  soldier,  who  perished  in 
one  of  the  last  conflicts  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  Frank- 
lin formed  a  strong  sentiment  of  affection,  when  Laurens 
came  to  France,  at  the  instance  of  Washington,  for  the 
purpose  of  obtaining  some  additional  aids  from  the  King 
for  the  prosecution  of  the  war.  In  a  letter  to  him,  signed 
"most  affectionately  yours,' *  when  Laurens  was  about  to 
return  to  America,  Franklin  inclosed  him  an  order  for 
another  hundred  louis  with  an  old  man's  blessing.  "  Take 
my  Blessing  with  it, "  he  said,  "and  my  Prayers  that  God 
may  send  you  safe  &  well  home  with  your  Cargoes.  I 
would  not  attempt  persuading  you  to  quit  the  military 
Line,  because  I  think  you  have  the  Qualities  of  Mind  and 
Body  that  promise  your  doing  great  service  &  acquiring 
Honour  in  that  Line."1 

.  How  profound  was  the  mutual  respect  and  affection 
that  Washington  and  Franklin  entertained  for  each 
other,  we  have  seen.  It  is  an  inspiring  thing  to  note 
how  the  words  of  the  latter  swell,  as  with  the  strains  of 
some  heroic  measure,  when  his  admiration  for  the  great 
contemporary,  whose  services  to  "the  glorious  cause" 
alone  exceeded  his,  lifts  him  up  from  the  lower  to  the 
higher  levels  of  our  emotional  and  intellectual  nature. 

Should  peace  arrive  after  another  Campaign  or  two,  and 
afford  us  a  little  Leisure  [he  wrote  to  Washington  from 
Passy,  on  March  5,  1780],  I  should  be  happy  to  see  your  Ex- 
cellency in  Europe,  and  to  accompany  you,  if  my  Age  and 
Strength  would  permit,  in  visiting  some  of  its  ancient  and 
most  famous  Kingdoms.  You  would,  on  this  side  of  the  Sea, 
enjoy  the  great  Reputation  you  have  acquir'd,  pure  and  free 
from  those  little  Shades  that  the  Jealousy  and  Envy  of  a 

1  The  death  of  John  Laurens  in  an  obscure  skirmish,  almost  at  the 
very  end  of  the  Revolutionary  War,  after  a  brief  career,  distinguished  by 
rare  intellectual  promise  and  daring  valor  is  one  of  the  most  painful  tra- 
gedies of  that  war.  "He  had  not  a  fault  that  I  could  discover,"  Washing- 
ton said  of  him,  "unless  it  were  intrepidity  bordering  on  rashness." 


Franklin's  American  Friends  317 

Man's  Countrymen  and  Cotemporaries  are  ever  endeavouring 
to  cast  over  living  Merit.  Here  you  would  know,  and  enjoy,, 
what  Posterity  will  say  of  Washington.  For  iooo  Leagues 
have  nearly  the  same  Effect  with  iooo  Years.  The  feeble 
Voice  of  those  grovelling  Passions  cannot  extend  so  far  either 
in  Time  or  Distance.  At  present  I  enjoy  that  Pleasure  for 
you,  as  I  frequently  hear  the  old  Generals  of  this  martial 
Country  (who  study  the  Maps  of  America,  and  mark  upon 
them  all  your  Operations)  speak  with  sincere  Approbation 
and  great  Applause  of  your  conduct;  and  join  in  giving  you 
the  Character  of  one  of  the  greatest  Captains  of  the  Age. 

The  caprice  of  future  events  might  well  have  deprived 
these  words  of  some  of  their  rich  cadence,  but  it  did  not, 
and,  even  the  voice  of  cis- Atlantic  jealousy  and  envy 
seems  to  be  as  impotent  in  the  very  presence  of  Wash- 
ington, as  at  the  distance  of  a  thousand  leagues  away, 
when  we  place  beside  this  letter  the  words  written  by 
Franklin  to  him  a  few  years  later  after  the  surrender  of 
Cornwallis: 

All  the  world  agree,  that  no  expedition  was  ever  better 
planned  or  better  executed;  it  has  made  a  great  addition  to 
the  military  reputation  you  had  already  acquired,  and 
brightens  the  glory  that  surrounds  your  name,  and  that  must 
accompany  it  to  our  latest  posterity.  No  news  could  possibly 
make  me  more  happy.  The  infant  Hercules  has  now  strangled 
the  two  serpents  (the  several  armies  of  Burgoyne  and  Corn- 
wallis) that  attacked  him  in  his  cradle,  and  I  trust  his  future 
history  will  be  answerable.1 

1  It  may  be  said  of  the  fame  of  Washington  in  his  own  land,  with  some- 
thing like  approximate  accuracy,  that  a  file  of  wild  geese  winging  its  flight 
along  the  Atlantic  Seaboard  from  Maine  to  the  alluvial  meadows  of  the 
Roanoke  in  Southern  Virginia,  is,  for  but  brief  periods  only  out  of  sight 
of  some  statue  or  monument  erected  in  his  honor  by  his  grateful  country- 
men. The  fame  of  Franklin  in  America  is  but  little  less  strikingly  attested. 
As  long  ago  as  1864,  Parton  could  say  this  of  it:  "As  there  are  few  counties 
in  the  Union  which  have  not  a  town  named  Franklin,  so  there  are  few  towns 
of  any  magnitude,  which  do  not  possess  a  Franklin  Street,  or  a  Franklin 
Square,  a  Franklin  hotel,  a  Franklin  bank,  a  Franklin  fire-engine,  a  Frank- 


3i 8       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Cordial  relations  of  friendship  also  existed  between 
Franklin  and  Jefferson.  In  their  versatility,  their  love  of 
science,  their  speculative  freedom  and  their  faith  in  the 
popular  intelligence  and  conscience  the  two  men  had 
much  in  common.  As  members  of  the  committee,  that 
drafted  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  as  well  as  in  other 
relations,  they  were  brought  into  familiar  contact  with 
each  other;  and  to  Jefferson  we  owe  valuable  testimony 
touching  matters  with  respect  to  which  the  reputation 
of  Franklin  has  been  assailed,  and  also  a  sheaf  of  capital 
stories,  that  helps  us  to  a  still  clearer  insight  into  the  per- 
sonal and  social  phases  of  Franklin's  life  and  character. 
One  of  these  stories  is  the  famous  story  of  Abbe  Raynal 
and  the  Speech  of  Polly  Baker,  when  she  was  prosecuted 
the  fifth  time  for  having  a  bastard  child. 

The  Doctor  and  Silas  Deane  [Jefferson  tells  us]  were  in 
conversation  one  day  at  Passy  on  the  numerous  errors  in  the 
Abbess  "  Histoire  des  deux  Indes"  when  he  happened  to  step 
in.  After  the  usual  salutations,  Silas  Deane  said  to  him, ' '  The 
Doctor  and  myself,  Abbe\  were  just  speaking  of  the  errors 
of  fact  into  which  you  have  been  led  in  your  history."  "Oh 
no,  Sir, "  said  the  Abbe\  "that  is  impossible.  I  took  the  great- 
est care  not  to  insert  a  single  fact,  for  which  I  had  not  the 
most  unquestionable  authority."  "Why,"  says  Deane, 
"there  is  the  story  of  Polly  Baker,  and  the  eloquent  apology 
you  have  put  into  her  mouth,  when  brought  before  a  court  of 
Massachusetts  to  suffer  punishment  under  a  law  which  you 
cite,  for  having  had  a  bastard.  I  know  there  never  was  such 
a  law  in  Massachusetts."  "Be  assured,"  said  the  Abb£, 
"you  are  mistaken,  and  that  that  is  a  true  story.     I  do  not 

lin  Lyceum,  a  Franklin  lodge,  or  a  Franklin  charitable  association.  His 
bust  and  his  portrait  are  only  less  universal  than  those  of  Washington, 
and  most  large  cities  contain  something  of  the  nature  of  a  monument  to 
Franklin."  How  little  this  fame  has  died  down  since  these  words  were 
written  was  seen  in  the  pomp  and  splendor  with  which  the  second  cen- 
tenary of  the  birth  of  Franklin  was  celebrated  in  the  "United  States  and 
France  in  1906. 


Franklin's  American  Friends  319 

immediately  recollect  indeed  the  particular  information  on 
which  I  quote  it;  but  I  am  certain  that  I  had  for  it  unques- 
tionable authority."  Doctor  Franklin,  who  had  been  for 
some  time  shaking  with  unrestrained  laughter  at  the  Abbess 
confidence  in  his  authority  for  that  tale,  said,  "I  will  tell  you, 
Abh6,  the  origin  of  that  story.  When  I  was  a  printer  and 
editor  of  a  newspaper,  we  were  sometimes  slack  of  news,  and  to 
amuse  our  customers  I  used  to  fill  up  our  vacant  columns 
with  anecdotes  and  fables,  and  fancies  of  my  own,  and  this  of 
Polly  Baker  is  a  story  of  my  making,  on  one  of  those  occa- 
sions." The  Abbe\  without  the  least  disconcert,  exclaimed 
with  a  laugh,  "Oh,  very  well,  Doctor,  I  had  rather  relate  your 
stories  than  other  men's  truths." 

Another  of  Jefferson's  stories,  is  the  equally  famous 
one  of  John  Thompson,  hatter. 

When  the  Declaration  of  Independence  [he  says]  was 
under  the  consideration  of  Congress,  there  were  two  or  three 
unlucky  expressions  in  it  which  gave  offence  to  some  members. 
The  words  "Scotch  and  other  foreign  auxiliaries"  excited  the 
ire  of  a  gentleman  or  two  of  that  country.  Severe  strictures 
on  the  conduct  of  the  British  King,  in  negativing  our  repeated 
repeals  of  the  law  which  permitted  the  importation  of  slaves, 
were  disapproved  by  some  Southern  gentlemen,  whose  reflec- 
tions were  not  yet  matured  to  the  full  abhorrence  of  that 
traffic.  Although  the  offensive  expressions  were  immediately 
yielded,  these  gentlemen  continued  their  depredations  on 
other  parts  of  the  instrument.  I  was  sitting  by  Doctor 
Franklin,  who  perceived  that  I  was  not  insensible  to  these 
mutilations.  "I  have  made  it  a  rule,"  said  he,  "whenever 
in  my  power,  to  avoid  becoming  the  draughtsman  of  papers  to 
be  reviewed  by  a  public  body.  I  took  my  lesson  from  an 
incident  which  I  will  relate  to  you.  When  I  was  a  journey- 
man printer,  one  of  my  companions,  an  apprentice  hatter, 
having  served  out  his  time,  was  about  to  open  shop  for  him- 
self. His  first  concern  was  to  have  a  handsome  signboard, 
with  a  proper  inscription.  He  composed  it  in  these  words, 
'  John  Thompson,  Hatter,  makes  and  sells  hats  for  ready  money,' 


320       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

with  a  figure  of  a  hat  subjoined;  but  he  thought  he  would  sub- 
mit it  to  his  friends  for  their  amendments.  The  first  he  showed 
it  to  thought  the  word  'Hatter'  tautologous,  because  followed 
by  the  words  'makes  hats'  which  showed  he  was  a  hatter. 
It  was  struck  out.  The  next  observed  that  the  word  '  makes ' 
might  as  well  be  omitted,  because  his  customers  would  not 
care  who  made  the  hats.  If  good  and  to  their  mind,  they 
would  buy,  by  whomsoever  made.  He  struck  it  out.  A  third 
said  he  thought  the  words  'for  ready  money'  were  useless,  as 
it  was  not  the  custom  of  the  place  to  sell  on  credit;  every- 
one w*ho  purchased  expected  to  pay.  They  were  parted 
with,  and  the  inscription  now  stood,  'John  Thompson  sells 
hats.'  'Sells  hats!'  says  his  next  friend.  'Why  nobody  will 
expect  you  to  give  them  away;  what  then  is  the  use  of  that 
word?'  It  was  stricken  out,  and  'hats'  followed  it,  the  rather 
as  there  was  one  painted  on  the  board.  So  the  inscription 
was  reduced  ultimately  to  '  John  Thompson, '  with  the  figure 
of  a  hat  subjoined." 

The  next  story  has  the  same  background,  the  Conti- 
nental Congress. 

I  was  sitting  by  Doctor  Franklin  [says  Jefferson],  and  ob- 
served to  him  that  I  thought  we  should  except  books  (from  the 
obligations  of  the  non-importation  association  formed  in 
America  to  bring  England  to  terms);  that  we  ought  not  to 
exclude  science,  even  coming  from  an  enemy.  He  thought 
so  too,  and  I  proposed  the  exception,  which  was  agreed  to. 
Soon  after  it  occurred  that  medicine  should  be  excepted,  and 
I  suggested  that  also  to  the  Doctor.  "As  to  that,"  said  he, 
"I  will  tell  you  a  story.  When  I  was  in  London,  in  such  a 
year,  there  was  a  weekly  club  of  physicians,  of  which  Sir 
John  Pringle  was  President,  and  I  was  invited  by  my  friend 
Doctor  Fothergill  to  attend  when  convenient.  Their  rule 
was  to  propose  a  thesis  one  week  and  discuss  it  the  next.  I 
happened  there  when  the  question  to  be  considered  was 
whether  physicians  had,  on  the  whole,  done  most  good  or 
harm?  The  young  members,  particularly,  having  discussed 
it  very  learnedly  and  eloquently  till  the  subject  was  exhausted, 


Franklin's  American  Friends  321 

one  of  them  observed  to  Sir  John  Pringle,  that  although  it 
was  not  usual  for  the  President  to  take  part  in  a  debate,  yet 
they  were  desirous  to  know  his  opinion  on  the  question.  He 
said  they  must  first  tell  him  whether,  under  the  appellation 
of  physicians,  they  meant  to  include  old  women,  if  they  did 
he  thought  they  had  done  more  good  than  harm,  otherwise 
more  harm  than  good." 

This  incident  brings  back  to  us,  as  it  doubtless  did  to 
Franklin,  the  augurs  jesting  among  themselves  over 
religion. * 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  many  other  easy  pens  besides 
that  of  Jefferson  have  not  preserved  for  us  some  of  those 
humorous  stories  and  parables  of  which  Franklin's  memory 
was  such  a  rich  storehouse.  Doctor  Benjamin  Rush,  one 
of  his  intimate  friends,  is  said  to  have  entertained  the 
purpose  of  publishing  his  recollections  of  Franklin's 
table-talk.  The  purpose  was  never  fulfilled,  but  the 
scraps  of  this  talk  which  we  find  in  Dr.  Rush's  diary  are 
sufficient  to  show  that,  even  in  regard  to  medicine,  Franklin 
had  a  stock  of  information  and  conclusions  which  were 
well  worth  the  hearing. 

As  a  member  of  the  Continental  Congress,  Franklin 
was  brought  into  close  working  intercourse  with  Charles 
Carroll  of  Carrollton,  and  formed  a  sincere  sentiment  of 
friendship  for  him,  which  was  strengthened  by  the  expedi- 
tion that  they  made  together  to  Canada,  as  two  of  the 
three  commissioners  appointed  by  Congress  to  win 
the  Canadians  over  to  the  American  cause.  Samuel 
Chase,  another  Marylander,  was  the  third  commissioner, 
and  the  three  were  accompanied  by  John  Carroll,  the 
brother  of  Charles  Carroll  of  Carrollton,  whose  character 

1  Another  story  of  Franklin's  told  by  Jefferson  is  good  enough  at  any  rate 
for  a  footnote.  At  parties  at  the  French  Court  he  sometimes  had  a  game 
of  chess  with  the  old  Duchess  of  Bourbon.  Happening  once  to  put  her 
king  into  prize,  he  took  it.  "Ah,"  said  she,  "we  do  not  take  kings  so." 
"We  do  in  America,"  said  he. 


2,22       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

as  a  Catholic  priest,  it  was  hoped,  would  promote  the 
success  of  the  mission.  On  his  way  back  to  Philadelphia, 
in  advance  of  his  fellow-commissioners,  Franklin  acknow- 
ledged in  grateful  terms  the  help  that  he  had  received  on 
his  return  journey  from  the  friendly  assistance  and  tender 
care  of  this  good  man,  who  became  his  firm  friend,  and 
was  subsequently  made  the  first  Catholic  Bishop  of 
America  upon  his  recommendation.  William  Carmichael, 
another  Marylander,  who  was  for  a  time  the  secretary  of 
vSilas  Deane  at  Paris,  was  also  one  of  Franklin's  friends. 
There  is  a  tinge  of  true  affection  about  his  letters  to  Carmi- 
chael, and  the  latter,  in  a  letter  written  in  the  year  1777, 
while  stating  that  Franklin's  age  in  some  measure  hin- 
dered him  from  taking  so  active  a  part  in  the  drudgery  of 
business  as  his  great  zeal  and  abilities  warranted,  remarks, 
"He  is  the  Master  to  whom  we  children  in  politics  all 
look  up  for  counsel,  and  whose  name  is  everywhere  a 
passport  to  be  well  received."  When  Carmichael  was 
the  American  Secretary  of  Legation  at  Madrid,  Franklin 
still  remembered  enough  of  his  Spanish  to  request  the 
former  to  send  him  the  Gazette  of  Madrid  and  any  new 
pamphlets  that  were  curious.  "I  remember  the  Maxim 
you  mention  of  Charles  V,  Yo  y  el  Tiempo,"  he  wrote  to 
Carmichael  on  one  occasion,  "and  have  somewhere  met 
with  an  Answer  to  it  in  this  distich, 

*I  and  time  'gainst  any  two, 

Chance  and  I  'gainst  Time  and  you/ 

"And  I  think  the  Gentlemen  you  have  at  present  to  deal 
with,  would  do  wisely  to  guard  a  little  more  against  certain 
Chances.' '  In  another  letter,  Franklin,  referring  to  his 
"Essay  on  Perfumes,"  dedicated  to  the  Academy  of 
Brussels,  writes  to  Carmichael,  "You  do  my  little  Scrib- 
blings  too  much  honour  in  proposing  to  print  them;  but 
they  are  at  your  Disposition,  except  the  Letter  to  the 
Academy  which  having  several  English  Puns  in  it,  can  not 


Franklin's  American  Friends  323 

be  translated,  and  besides  has  too  much  grossilrete  to  be 
borne  by  the  polite  Readers  of  these  Nations." 

It  was  in  Pennsylvania  and  New  England,  however,  so 
far  as  America  was  concerned,  that  Franklin  formed  the 
intimate  friendships  which  led  him  so  often  to  say  towards 
the  close  of  his  life,  as  one  old  friend  after  another  dropped 
through  the  bridge  of  Mirzah,  that  the  loss  of  friends  is 
the  tax  imposed  upon  us  by  nature  for  living  too  long. 

The  closest  friend  of  his  early  youth  was  his  Boston 
friend,  John  Collins.  The  reader  has  already  learnt 
how  soon  religious  skepticism,  drinking  and  gambling 
ate  out  the  core  of  this  friend's  character. 

With  his  intensely  social  nature,  Franklin  had  hardly 
found  employment  in  Philadelphia  before  in  his  own 
language  he  began  to  have  some  acquaintance  among  the 
young  people  of  the  town,  that  were  lovers  of  reading, 
with  whom  he  spent  his  evenings  very  agreeably.  His 
first  group  of  friends  in  Philadelphia  was  formed  before 
he  left  Pennsylvania  for  London  in  1724.  In  his  pictorial 
way—for  the  Autobiography  is  engraved  with  a  burin 
rather  than  written  with  a  pen — Franklin  brings  the 
figures  of  this  group  before  us  with  admirable  distinctness. 
They  were  three  in  number,  and  all  were  lovers  of  reading. 
Two  of  them,  Charles  Osborne  and  Joseph  Watson,  were 
clerks  to  an  eminent  conveyancer  in  Philadelphia,  Charles 
Brogden.  The  third,  James  Ralph,  who  has  already  been 
mentioned  by  us,  was  clerk  to  a  merchant.  Watson  was 
a  pious,  sensible  young  man,  of  great  integrity;  the  others 
were  rather  more  lax  in  their  principles  of  religion,  parti- 
cularly Ralph,  who,  as  well  as  Collins,  to  quote  the  pre- 
cise words  of  Franklin's  confession,  had  been  unsettled 
by  him,  "for  which,' '  he  adds,  "they  both  made  me 
suffer." 

Osborne  [Franklin  continues]  was  sensible,  candid,  frank; 
sincere  and  affectionate  to  his  friends;  but,  in  literary  matters, 


324       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

too  fond  of  criticising.  Ralph  was  ingenious,  genteel  in  his 
manners,  and  extremely  eloquent;  I  think  I  never  knew  a 
prettier  talker.  Both  of  them  great  admirers  of  poetry,  and 
began  to  try  their  hands  in  little  pieces.  Many  pleasant 
walks  we  four  had  together  on  Sundays  into  the  woods,  near 
Schuylkill,  where  we  read  to  one  another,  and  conferr'd  on 
what  we  read. 

Ralph  had  the  most  fatal  of  all  gifts  for  a  clever  man — 
the  gift  of  writing  poetry  tolerably  well.  Osborne  tried 
to  convince  him  that  he  had  no  genius  for  it,  and  advised 
him  to  stick  to  mercantile  pursuits.  Franklin  conserva- 
tively approved  the  amusing  one's  self  with  poetry  now 
and  then  so  far  as  to  improve  one's  language,  but  no 
farther. 

Thus  things  stood  when  the  friends  proposed  that  each 
should  produce  at  their  next  meeting  a  poetical  version 
of  the  1 8th  Psalm.  Ralph  composed  his  version,  showed 
it  to  Franklin,  who  admired  it,  and,  being  satisfied  that 
Osborne's  criticisms  of  his  muse  were  the  suggestions  of 
mere  envy,  asked  Franklin  to  produce  it  at  the  next 
symposium  of  the  friends  as  his  own.  Franklin,  who  had 
a  relish  for  practical  jokes  throughout  his  life,  fell  in 
readily  with  Ralph's  stratagem.  But  we  shall  let  a  writer, 
whose  diction  is  as  incompressible  as  water,  narrate  what 
followed  in  his  own  lively  way: 

We  met;  Watson's  performance  was  read;  there  were  some 
beauties  in  it,  but  many,  defects.  Osborne's  was  read;  it 
was  much  better;  Ralph  did  it  justice;  remarked  some  faults, 
but  applauded  the  beauties.  He  himself  had  nothing  to 
produce.  I  was  backward;  seemed  desirous  of  being  excused; 
had  not  had  sufficient  time  to  correct,  etc.;  but  no  excuse 
could  be  admitted;  produce  I  must.  It  was  read  and  repeated; 
Watson  and  Osborne  gave  up  the  contest,  and  join'd  in  ap- 
plauding it.  Ralph  only  made  some  criticisms,  and  propos'd 
some  amendments;  but  I  defended  my  text.  Osborne  was 
against  Ralph,  and  told  him  he  was  no  better  a  critic  than 


Franklin's  American  Friends  325 

poet,  so  he  dropt  the  argument.  As  they  two  went  home 
together,  Osborne  expressed  himself  still  more  strongly  in 
favour  of  what  he  thought  my  production;  having  restrain'd 
himself  before,  as  he  said,  lest  I  should  think  it  flattery. 
"But  who  would  have  imagin'd, "  said  he,  "that  Franklin  had 
been  capable  of  such  a  performance,  such  painting,  such 
force,,  such  fire !  He  has  even  improv'd  the  original.  In  his 
common  conversation  he  seems  to  have  no  choice  of  words; 
he  hesitates  and  blunders;  and  yet,  good  God!  how  he  writes!" 
When  we  next  met,  Ralph  discovered  the  trick  we  had  plaid 
him,  and  Osborne  was  a  little  laught  at. 

This  transaction  fixed  Ralph  in  his  resolution  of  becoming  a 
poet.  I  did  all  I  could  to  dissuade  him  from  it,  but  he  con- 
tinued scribbling  verses  till  Pope  cured  him.1 

Watson,  we  are  told  by  Franklin,  died  in  his  arms  a 
few  years  after  this  incident,  much  lamented,  being  the 

1  It  may  be  said  of  Ralph  that  few  names  are  surer  of  immortality  than 
his,  though  not  for  the  reasons  upon  which  he  founded  his  deceitful  hopes. 
Between  the  Autobiography  and  the  Dunciad  he  is,  not  unlike  a  mummy, 
preserved  long  beyond  the  date  at  which,  in  the  ordinary  course  of  things, 
he  would  have  been  overtaken  by  oblivion.  This  is  one  of  the  couplets 
that  Pope  bestowed  upon  him  in  the  Dunciad: 

"Silence,  ye  Wolves!    While  Ralph  to  Cynthia  howls,       » 
And  makes  night  hideous — answer  him,  ye  owls." 

The  couplet  was  accompanied  by  a  still  more  venomous  sting  in  prose: 
"James  Ralph,  a  name  inserted  after  the  first  editions,  not  known  till  he 
writ  a  swearing-piece  called  Sawney,  very  abusive  of  Dr.  Swift,  Mr.  Gay, 
and  myself.  These  lines  allude  to  a  thing  of  his  entitled  Night,  a  poem. 
This  low  writer  attended  his  own  works  with  panegyrics  in  the  Journals, 
and  once  in  particular  praised  himself  highly  above  Mr.  Addison,  in  wretched 
remarks  upon  that  author's  account  of  English  poets,  printed  in  a  London 
Journal,  September,  1728.  He  was  wholly  illiterate  and  knew  no  language, 
not  even  French.  Being  advised  to  read  the  rules  of  dramatic  poetry 
before  he  began  a  play,  he  smiled  and  replied  'Shakspeare  writ  without 
rules. '  He  ended  at  last  in  the  common  sink  of  all  such  writers,  a  political 
newspaper,  to  which  he  was  recommended  by  his  friend  Arnal,  and  re- 
ceived a  small  pittance  for  pay;  and  being  detected  in  writing  on  both 
sides  on  one  and  the  same  day,  he  publicly  justified  the  morality  of  his 
conduct."    Another  couplet  of  the  Dunciad  is  this: 

"And  see!  the  very  Gazetteers  give  o'er, 
Ev'n  Ralph  repents,  and  Henley  writes  no  more." 


326       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

best  of  their  set.  Osborne  went  to  the  West  Indies,  where 
he  became  an  eminent  lawyer,  and  made  money,  but 
died  young.  "He  and  I,"  observes  Franklin,  "had 
made  a  serious  agreement,  that  the  one  who  hap- 
pen'd  first  to  die  should,  if  possible,  make  a  friendly 
visijt  to  the  other,  and  acquaint  him  how  he  found 
things  in  that  separate  state.  But  he  never  fulfill'd 
his  promise. " 

This  group  of  friends  was  succeeded  on  Franklin's 
return  from  London  by  the  persons  who1  constituted  with 
him  the  original  members  of  the  Junto :  Joseph  Breintnal, 
"a  copyer  of  deeds  for  the  scriveners,"  Thos.  Godfrey, 
the  mathematical  precisian,  for  whom  Franklin  had  so 
little  partiality,  Nicholas  Scull,  "a  surveyor,  afterwards 
Surveyor-general,  who  lov'd  books,  and  sometimes  made  a 
few  verses,"  William  Parsons,  "bred  a  shoemaker,  but, 
loving  reading,  had  acquir'd  a  considerable  share  of 
mathematics,  which  he  first  studied  with  a  view  to  astro- 
logy, that  he  afterwards  laught  at,"  William  Maugridge, 
"a  joiner,  a  most  exquisite  mechanic,  and  a  solid,  sensible 
man, "  Hugh  Meredith,  Stephen  Potts,  and  George  Webb, 
journeymen  printers,  Robert  Grace,  "a  young  gentleman 
of  some  fortune,  generous,  lively,  and  witty;  a  lover  of 
punning  and  of  his  friends, "  and  William  Coleman,  then  a 
merchant's  clerk  about  Franklin's  age,  who  had  the  coolest, 
clearest  head,  the  best  heart,  and  the  exactest  morals, 
Franklin  declares,  of  almost  any  man  he  ever  met  with. 
Coleman  subsequently  became  a  merchant  of  great  note, 
and  a  provincial  judge;  and  the  friendship  between 
Franklin  and  himself  continued  without  interruption  until 
Coleman's  death,  a  period  of  more  than  forty  years. 
Like  Scull,  Parsons  also  became  Surveyor-General.  The 
reader  will  remember  how,  partly  inspired  by  his  affection 
for  Robert  Grace,  and  partly  by  resentment  over  a  small 
office,  Franklin  applied  the  sharp  edge  of  the  lex  talionis 
to  Jemmy  Read.     How  both  Coleman  and  Grace  came 


Franklin's  American  Friends  327 

to  the  aid  of  Franklin  in  an  hour  of  dire  distress,  we  shall 
see  hereafter. 

Such  letters  from  Franklin  to  Parsons,  as  have  sur- 
vived, bear  the  marks  of  intimate  friendship.  In  one  to 
him,  when  he  was  in  command  of  a  company  at  Easton, 
dated  December  15,  1755,  in  which  reference  is  macfe  to 
arms  and  supplies,  that  had  been  forwarded  for  the  de- 
fence of  that  town  against  the  Indians,  Franklin  says, 
"Be  of  good  Courage,  and  God  guide  you.  Your  Friends 
will  never  desert  you."  Four  of  the  original  members  of 
the  Junto  were  among  the  first  members  of  the  Philo- 
sophical Society,  established  by  Franklin,  Parsons,  as 
Geographer,  Thomas  Godfrey,  as  Mathematician,  Cole- 
man as  Treasurer,  and  Franklin  himself  as  Secretary. 
Parsons  died  during  the  first  mission  of  Franklin  to  Eng- 
land, and,  in  a  letter  to  Deborah  the  latter  comments  on 
the  event  in  these  words:  "I  regret  the  Loss  of  my 
Friend  Parsons.  Death  begins  to  make  Breaches  in  the 
little  Junto  of  old  Friends,  that  he  had  long  forborne,  and 
it  must  be  expected  he  will  now  soon  pick  us  all  off  one 
after  another."  In  another  letter,  written  some  months 
later  to  Hugh  Roberts,  a  member  of  the  Junto,  but  not 
one  of  the  original  members,  he  institutes  a  kind  of  Plu- 
tarchian  contrast  between  Parsons  and  Stephen  Potts, 
who  is  described  in  the  Autobiography  as  a  young  country- 
man of  full  age,  bred  to  country  work,  of  uncommon  natural 
parts,  and  great  wit  and  humor,  but  a  little  idle. 

Two  of  the  former  members  of  the  Junto  you  tell  me  [he 
said]  are  departed  this  life,  Potts  and  Parsons.  Odd  char- 
acters both  of  them.  Parsons  a  wise  man,  that  often  acted 
foolishly;  Potts  a  wit,  that  seldom  acted  wisely.  If  enough 
were  the  means  to  make  a  man  happy,  one  had  always  the 
means  of  happiness,  without  ever  enjoying  the  thing;  the  other 
had  always  the  thing,  without  ever  possessing  the  means. 
Parsons,  even  in  his  prosperity,  always  fretting;  Potts,  in  the 
midst  of  his  poverty,  ever  laughing.     It  seems,  then,  that 


328       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

happiness  in  this  life  rather  depends  on  internals  than  exter- 
nals; and  that,  besides  the  natural  effects  of  wisdom  and 
virtue,  vice  and  folly,  there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  happy  or  an 
unhappy  constitution.  They  were  both  our  friends,  and  loved 
us.  So,  peace  to  their  shades.  They  had  their  virtues  as 
well  as  their  foibles;  they  were  both  honest  men,  and  that 
alone,  as  the  world  goes,  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  characters. 
They  were  old  acquaintances,  in  whose  company  I  formerly 
enjoyed  a  great  deal  of  pleasure,  and  I  cannot  think  of  losing 
them,  without  concern  and  regret. 

The  Hugh  Roberts  to  whom  this  letter  was  written 
was  the  Hugh  Roberts,  who  found  such  pleasure  in  the 
glad  peal  of  bells,  that  announced  the  safe  arrival  of 
Franklin  in  England,  and  in  his  reminiscences  of  his 
friend  of  forty  years'  standing,  that  he  quite  forgot  that 
it  was  his  rule  to  be  in  bed  by  eleven  o'clock.  He  was,  if 
Franklin  may  be  believed,  an  eminent  farmer,  which 
may  account  for  the  early  hours  he  kept;  and  how  near 
he  was  to  Franklin  the  affectionate  tone  of  this  very  letter 
abundantly  testifies.  After  expressing  his  grief  because 
of  their  friend  Syng's  loss  of  his  son,  and  the  hope  that 
Roberts'  own  son  might  be  in  every  respect  as  good  and 
useful  as  his  father  (than  which  he  need  not  wish  him 
more,  he  said)  Franklin  takes  Roberts  gently  to  task  for 
not  attending  the  meetings  of  the  Junto  more  regularly. 

I  do  not  quite  like  your  absenting  yourself  from  that  Good 
old  club,  the  Junto.  Your  more  frequent  presence  might  be 
a  means  of  keeping  them  from  being  all  engaged  in  measures 
not  the  best  for  public  welfare.  I  exhort  you,  therefore,  to 
return  to  your  duty;  and,  as  the  Indians  say,  to  confirm  my 
words,  I  send  you  a  Birmingham  tile.  I  thought  the  neatness 
of  the  figures  would  please  you. 

Even  the  Birmingham  tile,  however,  did  not  have  the 
effect  of  correcting  Roberts'  remissness,  for  in  two  subse- 
quent letters  Franklin  returns  to  the  same  subject.     In 


Franklin's  American  Friends  329 

the  first,  he  tells  Roberts  that  he  had  received  his  letter 
by  the  hands  of  Roberts'  son  in  London,  and  had  had  the 
pleasure  withal  of  seeing  this  son  grow  up  a  solid,  sensible 
young  man.  He  then  reverts  to  the  Junto.  "You  tell 
me  you  sometimes  visit  the  ancient  Junto.  I  wish  you 
would  do  it  of tener.  I  know  they  all  love  and  respect  you, 
and  regret  your  absenting  yourself  so  much.  People  are 
apt  to  grow  strange,  and  not  understand  one  another  so 
well,  when  they  meet  but  seldom."  Then  follow  these 
words  which  help  us  to  see  how  he  came  to  declare  so 
confidently  on  another  occasion  that,  compared  with  the 
entire  happiness  of  existence,  its  occasional  unhappiness 
is  but  as  the  pricking  of  a  pin. 

Since  we  have  held  that  Club,  till  we  are  grown  grey  together, 
let  us  hold  it  out  to  the  End.  For  my  own  Part,  I  find  I  love 
Company,  Chat,  a  Laugh,  a  Glass,  and  even  a  Song,  as  well 
as  ever;  and  at  the  same  Time  relish  better  than  I  used  to 
do  the  grave  Observations  and  wise  Sentences  of  old  Men's 
Conversation;  so  that  I  am  sure  the  Junto  will  be  still  as 
agreeable  to  me  as  it  ever  has  been.  I  therefore  hope  it 
will  not  be  discontinu'd,  as  long  as  we  are  able  to  crawl 
together. 

The  second  of  the  two  letters  makes  still  another  appeal 
of  the  same  nature. 

I  wish  [Franklin  said]  you  would  continue  to  meet  the 
Junto,  notwithstanding  that  some  Effects  of  our  publick 
political  Misunderstandings  may  sometimes  appear  there. 
'Tis  now  perhaps  one  of  the  oldest  Clubs,  as  I  think  it  was 
formerly  one  of  the  best,  in  the  King's  Dominions.  It  wants 
but  about  two  years  of  Forty  since  it  was  establish' d.  We 
loved  and  still  love  one  another ;  we  are  grown  Grey  together, 
and  yet  it  is  too  early  to  Part.  Let  us  sit  till  the  Evening  of 
Life  is  spent.  The  Last  Hours  are  always  the  most  joyous. 
When  we  can  stay  no  longer,  'tis  time  enough  then  to  bid 
each  other  good  Night,  separate,  and  go  quietly  to  bed. 


33<>       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

When  even  the  bed  of  death  could  be  made  to  wear 
this  smooth  and  peaceful  aspect  by  such  a  genial  concep- 
tion of  existence,  it  is  not  surprising  that  Catherine 
Shipley,  a  friend  of  later  date,  should  have  asked  Franklin 
to  instruct  her  in  the  art  of  procuring  pleasant  dreams. 
It  was  in  this  letter,  too,  that  he  told  Roberts  that  he  was 
pleased  with  his  punning,  not  merely  because  he  liked 
punning  in  general,  but  because  he  learned  from  the  use 
of  it  by  Roberts  that  he  was  in  good  health  and  spirits. 
Of  Hugh  Roberts  it  needs  to  be  only  further  said  that  he 
was  one  of  Franklin's  many  friends  who  did  what  they 
could  by  courteous  offices,  when  Franklin  was  abroad,  to 
testify  that  they  loved  him  too  much  to  be  unmindful 
that  he  had  left  a  family  behind  him  entitled  to  their 
protection  and  social  attentions.  For  his  visits  to  his 
family  Franklin  sometimes  thanks  him. 

The  Philip  Syng  mentioned  in  one  of  the  letters  to  Hugh 
Roberts  was  another  Philadelphia  crony  of  Franklin's. 
He  was  enough  of  an  electrician  to  be  several  times  given 
due  credit  by  the  unhesitating  candor  of  Franklin  for 
ideas  which  the  public  would  otherwise,  perhaps,  have 
fathered  upon  Franklin  himself,  who  was  entirely  too 
careless  about  his  own  fine  feathers  to  have  any  desire 
for  borrowed  plumage. 

Samuel  Rhoads,  also,  was  one  of  the  intimate  Phila- 
delphia friends  to  whom  Franklin  was  in  the  habit  of 
sending  his  love.  He,  too,  was  an  original  member  of 
the  Philosophical  Society  established  by  Franklin  and 
was  set  down  as  "  Mechanician"  on  its  roll  of  membership. 
At  any  rate,  even  if  "  Mechanician  "  was  a  rather  pompous 
term  for  him,  as  "Geographer"  was  for  William  Parsons, 
the  surveyor,  he  was  enough  of  a  builder  to  warrant 
Franklin  in  imparting  to  him  many  valuable  points  about 
the  construction  of  houses,  which  were  brought  to  the 
former's  attention  when  he  was  abroad.  A  striking 
proof,  perhaps,  of  the  strength  of  the  attachment  between 


Franklin's  American  Friends  331 

the  two  is  found  in  the  fact  that  Rhoads  built  the  new- 
residence,  previously  mentioned  by  us,  for  Franklin 
without  a  rupture  in  their  friendship;  although  there 
appears  to  have  been  enough  of  the  usual  provoking 
delays  to  cause  Franklin  no  little  dissatisfaction. 

Rhoads  was  a  man  of  considerable  public  importance 
in  his  time.  He  enjoyed  the  distinction  of  being  one 
of  the  founders  of  the  Pennsylvania  Hospital,  a  conspicu- 
ous member  of  the  Assembly  of  Pennsylvania,  and  a 
Mayor  of  Philadelphia. 

He  was  one,  too,  of  the  Committee  of  the  Assembly 
which  audited  Franklin's  accounts  as  the  Agent  of  the 
Colony  upon  the  latter's  return  from  England  in  1762, 
and  he  was  likewise  a  member  of  the  Committee  which 
had  previously  reported  that  the  estates  of  the  Proprie- 
taries in  Pennsylvania  were  not  being  unfairly  taxed.  In 
one  of  Franklin's  letters  to  him,  there  is  a  humorous 
reference  to  Rhoads'  political  career.  "I  congratulate 
you, "  he  said,  "on  Your  Retirement,  and  you  being  able  to 
divert  yourself  with  farming;  'tis  an  inexhaustible  source  of 
perpetual  Amusement.  Your  Country  Seat  is  of  a  more 
secure  kind  than  that  in  the  Assembly:  and  I  hope  not  so 
much  in  the  Power  of  the  Mob  to  jostle  you  out  of." 

A  golden  sentence  in  this  letter  is  one  of  the  best  that 
Franklin  ever  penned.  "As  long  as  I  have  known  the 
World  I  have  observ'd  that  Wrong  is  always  growing  more 
Wrong  till  there  is  no  bearing  it,  and  that  right  however 
oppos'd,  comes  right  at  last." 

Rhoads,  Syng  and  Roberts  were  all  three  included 
with  Luke  Morris,  another  old  friend  and  an  et  cetera, 
intended  to  embrace  other  friends  besides,  in  a  letter 
which  Franklin  wrote  from  Passy  to  Dr.  Thomas  Bond. 

I  thank  you  [he  said]  for  the  pleasing  account  you  give  me 
of  the  health  and  welfare  of  my  old  friends,  Hugh  Roberts, 
Luke  Morris,  Philip  Syng,   Samuel   Rhoads,    &c.,   with   the 


332       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

same  of  yourself  and  family.  Shake  the  old  ones  by  the  hand 
for  me,  and  give  the  young  ones  my  blessing.  For  my  own 
part,  I  do  not  find  that  I  grow  any  older.  Being  arrived  at 
seventy,  and  considering  that  by  travelling  further  in  the  same 
road  I  should  probably  be  led  to  the  grave,  I  stopped  short, 
turned  about,  and  walked  back  again;  which  having  done  these 
four  years,  you  may  now  call  me  sixty-six. 


Dr.  Thomas  Bond,  the  Physician  of  the  Philosophical 
Society  established  by  Franklin,  to  whom  this  letter  was 
written,  was  also  one  of  Franklin's  life-long  friends.  He 
was  the  Doctor  Bond,  who  found  that  he  could  make  no 
headway  with  his  hospital  project  until  it  was  encouraged 
by  a  ga  ira  from  Franklin,  something  like  that  which  he 
is  said  to  have  uttered  many  years  afterwards  in  France 
when  the  issue  of  the  American  Revolution  was  uncertain. 
For  the  society  of  physicians  and  liberal-minded  clergy- 
men Franklin  had  a  peculiar  partiality.  To  the  one 
class  he  was  attracted  by  both  the  scientific  and  humani- 
tarian nature  of  their  profession,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
incessant  intercourse  with  their  fellow  creatures,  which 
makes  all  physicians  more  or  less  men  of  the  world;  and  to 
the  questioning  spirit  of  the  eighteenth  century  he  was 
too  true  not  to  have  a  natural  affinity  for  clergymen  of 
the  latitudinarian  type.  The  ties  between  Dr.  Thomas 
Bond,  Dr.  John  Bard  and  Dr.  Benjamin  Rush  and  himself 
were  very  close.  He  had  such  a  high  opinion  of  Dr. 
Bond's  pills  that  on  one  occasion  he  even  writes  to  his 
wife  from  Virginia  to  send  him  some  by  post.  On  another 
occasion,  when  he  was  in  England,  he  tells  Deborah  to 
thank  Dr.  Bond  for  the  care  that  he  takes  of  her.  In  a 
letter  to  the  Doctor  himself,  he  remarks  that  he  did  not 
know  why  their  school  of  physic  in  Philadelphia  should 
not  soon  be  equal  to  that  in  Edinburgh,  an  observation 
which  seemed  natural  enough  to  later  Philadelphians 
when  it  was  not  only  considered  throughout  the  United 


Franklin's  American  Friends  333 

States  a  high  compliment  to  say  of  a  man  that  he  was  as 
clever  as  a  Philadelphia  lawyer,  but  a  medical  education 
was  in  a  large  part  of  the  United  States  deemed  incomplete 
unless  it  had  received  the  finishing  touch  from  the  clinics 
of  that  city. 

When  Dr.  John  Bard  removed  to  New  York,  where  he 
became  the  first  President  of  the  New  York  Medical 
Society,  Franklin  stated  in  a  letter  to  Cadwallader  Colden 
that  he  esteemed  Dr.  Bard  an  ingenious  physician  and 
surgeon,  and  a  discreet,  worthy  and  honest  man.  In  a 
letter  to  Dr.  Bard  and  his  wife  in  1785,  he  used  these 
tender  words:  "You  are  right  in  supposing,  that  I 
interest  myself  in  everything  that  affects  you  and  yours, 
sympathizing  in  your  afflictions,  and  rejoicing  in  your 
felicities;  for  our  friendship  is  ancient,  and  was  never 
obscured  by  the  least  cloud." 

Dr.  Rush  was  such  a  fervid  friend  and  admirer  of 
Franklin  that  the  latter  found  it  necessary  to  request 
him,  if  he  published  his  discourse  on  the  Moral  Sense,  to 
omit  totally  and  suppress  that  most  extravagant  encomium 
on  his  friend  Franklin,  which  hurt  him  exceedingly  in  the 
unexpected  hearing,  and  would  mortify  him  beyond  con- 
ception if  it  should  appear  from  the  press.  The  doctor 
replied  by  saying  that  he  had  suppressed  the  encomium, 
but  had  taken  the  liberty  of  inscribing  the  discourse  to 
Franklin  by  a  simple  dedication,  and  earnestly  insisted 
upon  the  permission  of  his  friend  to  send  his  last  as  he  did 
his  first  publication  into  the  world  under  the  patronage 
of  his  name.  In  the  "simple"  dedication,  the  panegyric, 
which  had  made  Franklin  so  uncomfortable,  was  moder- 
ated to  such  an  extent  that  no  character  was  ascribed 
to  him  more  transcendent  than  that  of  the  friend  and 
benefactor  of  mankind. 

To  Dr.  Rush  we  are  under  obligations  for  several  stories 
about  Franklin.  He  tells  us  that,  when  chosen  by  Con- 
gress to  be  one  of  our  Commissioners  to  France,  Franklin 


334       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

turned  to  him,  and  remarked:  "I  am  old  and  good  for 
nothing;  but,  as  the  storekeepers  say  of  their  remnants  of 
cloth,  'I  am  but  a  fag  end,  and  you  may  have  me  for 
what  you  please.'"  No  one  doubts  now  that  for  the 
purpose  of  the  French  mission  he  was  by  far  the  best 
piece  of  goods  in  the  shop.  Another  story,  which  came  to 
Dr.  Rush  at  second  hand,  sounds  apocryphal.  "Why  do 
you  wear  that  old  coat  today?"  asked  Silas  Deane  of 
Franklin,  when  they  were  on  their  way  to  sign  the  Treaty 
of  Alliance  with  France.  Deane  referred  to  the  coat,  in 
which  Franklin  was  clad,  when  Wedderburn  made  the 
rabid  attack  on  him  before  the  Privy  Council,  to  which 
we  shall  refer  later.  "To  give  it  its  revenge,"  was  the 
reply.  Franklin  may  have  said  that,  but  it  was  not  like 
him  to  say  anything  of  the  sort. 

But  we  get  back  .to  the  domain  of  unquestionable 
authenticity  when  we  turn  to  Dr.  Rush's  account  of 
Franklin's  death-bed: 

The  evening  of  his  life  was  marked  by  the  same  activity  of 
his  moral  and  intellectual  powers  which  distinguished  its 
meridian.  His  conversation  with  his  family  upon  the  subject 
of  his  dissolution  was  free  and  cheerful.  A  few  days  before 
he  died,  he  rose  from  his  bed  and  begged  that  it  might  be 
made  up  for  him  so  that  he  might  die  in  a  decent  manner.  His 
daughter  told  him  that  she  hoped  he  would  recover  and  live 
many  years  longer.  He  calmly  replied,  "J  hope  not."  Upon 
being  advised  to  change  his  position  in  bed,  that  he  might 
breathe  easy,  he  said,  "A  dying  man  can  do  nothing  easy." 
All  orders  and  bodies  of  people  have  vied  with  each  other  in 
paying  tributes  of  respect  to  his  memory. 

A  Philadelphia  friend,  for  whom  Franklin  entertained 
a  peculiar  affection,  was  John  Bartram,  the  botanist. 
"Our  celebrated  Botanist  of  Pennsylvania,"  Franklin 
deservedly  terms  him  in  a  letter  to  Jan  Ingenhousz.  In 
one  letter  Franklin  addresses  him  as  "My  ever  dear 
friend,"  in  another  as  "My  good  and  dear  old  friend" 


Franklin's  American  Friends  335 

and  in  another  as  "My  dear  good  old  friend.' '  In  1751, 
Bartram  published  his  Observations  on  the  Inhabitants, 
Climate,  Soil,  Rivers,  Productions,  Animals,  and  other 
Matters  worthy  of  Notice.  Made  by  Mr.  John  Bartram  in 
his  Travels  from  Pensilvania  to  Onondaga,  Oswego,  and 
the  Lake  Ontario,  in  Canada,  and,  in  a  letter  to  Jared 
Eliot,  Franklin,  after  mentioning  the  fact  that  Bar- 
tram corresponded  with  several  of  the  great  naturalists 
in  Europe,  and  would  be  proud  of  an  acquaintance  with 
him,  said :  "  I  make  no  Apologies  for  introducing  him  to 
you;  for,  tho'  a  plain  illiterate  Man,  you  will  find  he  has 
Merit."  "He  is  a  Man  of  no  Letters,  but  a  curious 
Observer  of  Nature,"  was  his  statement  in  a  subsequent 
letter  to  the  same  correspondent.  Through  the  mediation 
of  Franklin,  Bartram  was  made  the  American  botanist 
to  the  King,  and  given  a  pension  for  the  fearless  and  tire- 
less search  for  botanical  specimens,  which  he  had  prose- 
cuted, when  American  forest,  savannah  and  everglade 
were  as  full  of  death  as  the  berry  of  the  nightshade.  It 
was  the  thought  of  what  he  had  hazarded  that  led  Franklin 
to  write  to  him  in  1 769 : "  I  wish  you  would  now  decline  your 
long  and  dangerous  peregrinations  in  search  of  new  plants, 
and  remain  safe  and  quiet  at  home,  employing  your  leisure 
hours  in  a  work  that  is  much  wanted,  and  which  no  one 
besides  is  so  capable  of  performing;  I  mean  the  writing  a 
Natural  Histoiy  of  our  country."  The  pension  meant  so 
much  to  Bartram  that  he  found  difficulty  in  assuring 
himself  that  it  would  last.  In  one  letter,  Franklin  tells 
him  that  he  imagines  that  there  is  no  doubt  but  the 
King's  bounty  to  him  would  be  continued,  but  he  must 
continue  on  his  part  to  send  over  now  and  then  a  few  such 
curious  seeds  as  he  could  procure  to  keep  up  his  claim. 
In  another  letter,  he  tells  him  that  there  is  no  instance 
in  the  then  King's  reign  of  a  pension  once  granted  ever 
being  taken  away,  unless  for  some  great  offence.  Frank- 
lin himself  was  first  of  all  a  sower  of  seed,  of  that  seed 


336       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

which  produces  the  wholesome  plants  of  benevolence  and 
utility;  so  it  seems  quite  in  keeping  to  find  him,  when  he 
was  absent  from  America,  maintaining  a  constant  inter- 
change of  different  sorts  of  seed  with  Bartram.  If  Bar- 
tram  chooses  to  try  the  seed  of  naked  oats  and  Swiss 
barley,  six  rows  to  one  ear,  he  can  get  some,  Franklin 
writes,  by  calling  on  Mrs.  Franklin.  In  another  letter,  he 
acknowledges  the  receipt  of  seeds  from  Bartram,  and,  in 
return  for  it,  sends  him  some  of  the  true  rhubarb  seed 
which  he  desires ;  also  some  green  dry  peas,  highly  esteemed 
in  England  as  the  best  for  making  pea  soup;  and  also 
some  caravances  or  beans,  of  which  a  cheese  was  made 
in  China.  Strangely  enough,  he  could  learn  nothing  about 
the  seed  of  the  lucerne  or  alfalfa  plant,  one  of  the  oldest 
of  forage  plants,  for  which  Bartram  wrote.  Later,  he 
sends  Bartram  a  small  box  of  upland  rice,  brought  from 
Cochin  China,  and  also  a  few  seeds  of  the  Chinese  tallow 
tree. 

Another  particular  friend  of  Franklin  was  John  Hughes 
of  Philadelphia.  This  is  the  Hughes,  out  of  whose  debt 
as  a  correspondent  Franklin,  when  in  England,  found  it 
impossible  to  keep.  He  was  a  man  of  considerable 
political  importance,  for  he  served  on  the  Committee  of 
the  Assembly,  which  was  charged  with  the  expenditure 
of  the  £60,000  appropriated  by  the  Assembly,  after  Brad- 
dock^  defeat,  mainly  for  the  defence  of  the  Province,  and 
on  the  Committee  of  the  Assembly,  which  audited  Frank- 
lin's accounts  after  his  return  from  England  in  1762; 
and  was  also  one  of  the  delegates  appointed  by  the  Assem- 
bly to  confer  with  Teedyuscung,  the  King  of  the  Dela- 
wares,  at  Easton  in  1756.  Even  when  Franklin,  his 
party  associate,  was  defeated  as  a  candidate  for  re- 
election to  the  Assembly  in  1764,  Hughes  contrived  to 
clamber  back  into  his  own  seat.  The  departure  for 
England  of  Franklin,  shortly  after  this  election,  was  the 
signal  for  the  most  venomous  of  all  the  attacks  made  upon 


Franklin's  American  Friends  337 

him  by  the  class  of  writers  which  he  happily  termed 
"bug- writers";  that  is,  writers,  to  use  his  words,  who 
resemble  "those  little  dirty  stinking  insects,  that  attack 
us  only  in  the  dark,  disturb  our  Repose,  molesting  and 
wounding  us,  while  our  Sweat  and  Blood  are  contributing 
to  their  Subsistence.* f  But  the  friendship  of  Hughes 
was  equal  to  the  emergency.  Incensed  at  the  outrageous 
nature,  of  the  attack,  he  published  a  card  over  his  signa- 
ture, in  which  he  promised  that,  if  Chief  Justice  Allen, 
or  any  gentleman  of  character,  would  undertake  to  justify 
the  charges  against  Franklin,  he  would  pay  £10  to  the 
Hospital  for  every  one  of  these  charges  that  was  estab- 
lished; provided  that  the  person,  who  made  them,  would 
pay  £5  for  every  false  accusation  against  Franklin  that 
he  disproved.  The  assailants  endeavored  to  turn  Hughes' 
challenge  into  ridicule  by  an  anonymous  reply,  but 
Hughes  rejoined  with  a  counter-reply  above  his  own 
signature,  in  which,  according  to  William  Franklin,  he 
lashed  them  very  severely  for  their  baseness.  This 
brought  on  a  newspaper  controversy,  which  did  not 
end,  until  Chief  Justice  Allen,  who  was  drawn  into  its 
vortex,  was  enraged  to  find  that  it  had  cost  him  £25. 
Later,  the  recommendation  of  Hughes  by  Franklin,  as  the 
Stamp  Distributor  for  Pennsylvania  and  the  Counties  of 
New  Castle,  Kent  and  Sussex,  gave  the  worst  shock  to 
the  popularity  of  the  latter  that  it  ever  received.  The 
fierce  heat  that  colonial  resentment  kindled  under  the 
hateful  office  proved  too  much  for  even  such  a  resolute 
incumbent  as  Hughes,  but  he  was  not  long  in  finding  a 
compensation  in  the  somewhat  lower  temperature  of  the 
office  of  Collector  of  Customs  for  the  Colonies,  which 
he  held  until  his  death. 

Thomas  Hopkinson,  of  Philadelphia,  too,  was  one  of 
Franklin's  particular  friends.  He  shared  his  enthusiasm 
for  electrical  experiments,  and  was  the  first  President  of 
the  Philosophical  Society  established  by  him.     With  his 


338       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

usual  generosity,  Franklin  took  pains  in  a  note  to  one  of 
his  scientific  papers  to  publish  the  fact  that  the  power 
of  points  to  throw  off  the  electrical  fire  was  first  com- 
municated to  him  by  this  friend,  then  deceased.  Nor  did 
he  stop  there,  but  referred  to  him  at  the  same  time  as  a 
man  "whose  virtue  and  integrity,  in  every  station  of  life, 
public  and  private,  will  ever  make  his  Memory  dear  to 
those  who  knew  him,  and  knew  how  to  value  him."  There 
is  an  amusing  reference  to  Hopkinson  in  the  Autobiography 
in  connection  with  the  occasion  on  which  Franklin  himself 
was  so  transported  by  Whitefield's  eloquence  as  to  empty 
his  pockets,  gold  and  all,  into  the  collector's  dish.  Dis- 
approving of  Whitefield's  desire  to  establish  an  orphan 
asylum  in  Georgia,  and  suspecting  that  subscriptions  would 
be  solicited  by  him  for  that  object,  and  yet  distrusting  his 
own  capacity  to  resist  a  preacher,  by  whom,  in  the  lan- 
guage of  Isaiah,  the  hearts  of  the  people  were  stirred,  as  the 
trees  of  the  wood  are  stirred  with  the  wind,  he  took  the 
precaution  of  emptying  his  pockets  before  he  left  home. 
But  Whitefield's  pathos  was  too  much  for  him  also. 
Towards  the  conclusion  of  the  discourse,  he  felt  a  strong 
desire  to  give,  and  applied  to  a  Quaker  neighbor,  who 
stood  near  him,  to  borrow  some  money  for  the  purpose. 
The  application  was  unfortunately  made,the  Autobiography 
says,  to  perhaps  the  only  man  in  the  company  who  had 
the  firmness  not  to  be  affected  by  the  preacher.  His 
answer  was,  "At  any  other  time,  Friend  Hopkinson,  I  would 
lend  to  thee  freely;  but  not  now,  for  thee  seems  to  be  out  of 
thy  right  senses." 

Anyone  who  enjoyed  Franklin's  friendship  experienced 
very  little  difficulty  in  passing  it  on  to  his  son  at  his 
death.  Francis  Hopkinson,  the  son  of  Thomas  Hopkin- 
son, and  the  author  of  Hail  Columbia,  is  one  example  of 
this.  Franklin's  letters  to  him  are  marked  by  every 
indication  of  affection,  and  he  bequeathed  to  him  all  his 
philosophical  instruments  in  Philadelphia,  and  made  him 


Franklin's  American  Friends  339 

one  of  the  executors  of  his  will  with  Henry  Hill,  John  Jay 
and  Mr.  Edward  Duffield,  of  Benfield,  in  Philadelphia 
County.  In  doing  so,  with  his  happy  faculty  for  such 
things  he  managed  to  pay  a  twofold  compliment  to  both 
father  and  son  in  one  breath.  After  expressing  in  a  letter 
to  Francis  Hopkinson  his  pleasure  that  Hopkinson  had  been 
appointed  to  the  honorable  office  of  Treasurer  of  Loans,  he 
added:  "I  think  the  Congress  judg'd  rightly  in  their 
Choice,  and  Exactness  in  accounts  and  scrupulous  fidelity 
in  matters  of  Trust  are  Qualities  for  which  your  father 
was  eminent,  and  which  I  was  persuaded  was  inherited  by 
his  Son  when  I  took  the  liberty  of  naming  him  one  of  the 
Executors  of  my  Will."  Franklin  even  had  a  mild  word 
of  commendation  for  Hopkinson's  political  squibs,  some  of 
which,  when  on  their  way  across  the  ocean  to  him,  fell 
into  the  hands  of  the  British  along  with  Henry  Laurens. 
The  captors,  it  is  safe  to  say,  attached  very  different 
degrees  of  importance  to  the  two  prizes,  and  Hopkinson 
himself  accepted  the  situation  with  the  cheerful  observa- 
tion, "They  are  heartily  welcome  to  any  performance 
of  mine  in  that  way.  I  wish  the  dose  was  stronger  and 
better  for  their  sake."  Several  of  the  letters  from  Franklin 
to  Francis  Hopkinson  bring  out  two  of  the  most  winning 
traits  of  the  writer,  his  ability  to  find  a  sweet  kernel  under 
every  rind  however  bitter,  and  his  aversion  to  defama- 
tion, which  led  him  to  say  truthfully  on  one  occasion  that 
between  abusing  and  being  abused  he  would  rather  be 
abused. 

As  to  the  Friends  and  Enemies  you  just  mention  [he  declared 
in  one  of  them],  I  have  hitherto,  Thanks  to  God,  had  Plenty 
of  the  former  kind;  they  have  been  my  Treasure;  and  it  has 
perhaps  been  of  no  Disadvantage  to  me,  that  I  have  had  a 
few  of  the  latter.  They  serve  to  put  us  upon  correcting  the 
Faults  we  have,  and  avoiding  those  we  are  in  danger  of  having. 
They  counteract  the  Mischief  Flattery  might  do  us,  and  their 
Malicious  Attacks  make  our  Friends  more  zealous  in  serving 


340       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

us,  and  promoting  our  Interest.  At  present,  I  do  not  know  of 
more  than  two  such  Enemies  that  I  enjoy,  viz.  Lee  and  Izard. 
I  deserved  the  Enmity  of  the  latter,  because  I  might  have 
avoided  it  by  paying  him  a  Compliment,  which  I  neglected. 
That  of  the  former  I  owe  to  the  People  of  France,  who  hap- 
pen'd  to  respect  me  too  much  and  him  too  little;  which  I 
could  bear,  and  he  could  not.  They  are  unhappy,  that  they 
cannot  make  everybody  hate  me  as  much  as  they  do;  and  I 
should  be  so,  if  my  Friends  did  not  love  me  much  more  than' 
those  Gentlemen  can  possibly  love  one  another. 


Every  ugly  witch  is  but  a  transfigured  princess.  This 
idea  is  one  that  was  readily  adopted  by  Franklin's  amiable 
philosophy  of  life.  The  thought  that  enemies  are  but 
wholesome  mortifications  for  the  pride  of  human  flesh  is 
a  thought  that  he  often  throws  out  in  his  letters  to  other 
persons  besides  Hopkinson.  In  one  to  the  gallant  Col. 
Henry  Bouquet,  who  was  also,  it  may  be  said  in  passing,  a 
warm  friend  of  Franklin,  the  pen  of  the  latter  halts  for  a 
moment  to  parenthesize  the  fact  that  God  had  blessed 
him  with  two  or  three  enemies  to  keep  him  in  order. 

But  there  were  few  facts  in  which  Franklin  found  more 
satisfaction  than  the  fact  that  all  his  enemies  were  mere 
political  enemies,  that  is  to  say,  enemies  like  Dr.  William 
Smith,  who  shot  poisoned  arrows  at  him,  when  he  was 
living,  and  fired  minute  guns  over  his  grave,  when  he  was 
dead. 

You  know  [he  wrote  to  his  daughter  Sally  from  Reedy  Island, 
when  he  was  leaving  America  on  his  second  mission  to  Eng- 
land], I  have  many  enemies,  all  indeed  on  the  public  account 
(for  I  cannot  recollect  that  I  have  in  a  private  capacity  given 
just  cause  of  offence  to  any  one  whatever),  yet  they  are 
enemies,  and  very  bitter  ones;  and  you  must  expect  their  en- 
mity will  extend  in  some  degree  to  you,  so  that  your  slightest 
indiscretions  will  be  magnified  into  crimes,  in  order  the  more 
sensibly  to  wound  and  afflict  me. 


Franklin's  American  Friends  341 

The  same  distinction  between  personal  and  political 
hostility  is  drawn  by  him  in  a  letter  to  John  Jay  of  a 
much  later  date  in  which  he  uses  the  only  terms  of  self- 
approval,  so  far  as  we  can  recollect,  that  a  biographer 
might  prefer  him  never  to  have  employed. 

I  have  [he  said],  as  you  observe,  some  enemies  in  England, 
but  they  are  my  enemies  as  an  American;  I  have  also  two  or 
three  in  America;  who  are  my  enemies  as  a  Minister;  but  I 
thank  God  there  are  not  in  the  whole  world  any  who  are  my 
Enemies  as  a  Man;  for  by  his  grace,  thro'  a  long  life,  I  have 
been  enabled  so  to  conduct  myself,  that  there  does  not  exist 
a  human  Being  who  can  justly  say,  "Ben.  Franklin  has 
wrong' d  me."  This,  my  friend,  is  in  old  age  a  comfortable 
Reflection. 

In  one  of  the  letters  to  Hopkinson,  mentioned  by  us, 
he  tells  Hopkinson  that  he  does  well  to  refrain  from 
newspaper  abuse.  He  was  afraid,  he  declared,  to  lend 
any  American  newspapers  in  France  until  he  had  examined 
and  laid  aside  such  as  would  disgrace  his  countrymen,  and 
subject  them  among  strangers  to  a  reflection  like  that 
used  by  a  gentleman  in  a  coffee-house  to  two  quarrelers, 
who,  after  a  mutually  free  use  of  the  words,  rogue,  villain, 
rascal,  scoundrel,  etc.,  seemed  as  if  they  would  refer  their 
dispute  to  him.  "  I  know  nothing  of  you,  or  your  Affair, " 
said  he;  "I  only  perceive  that  you  know  one  another.19 

The  conductor  of  a  newspaper,  he  thought,  should 
consider  himself  as  in  some  degree  the  guardian  of  his 
country's  reputation,  and  refuse  to  insert  such  writings  as 
might  hurt  it.  If  people  will  print  their  abuses  of  one 
another,  let  them  do  it  in  little  pamphlets,  and  distribute 
them  where  they  think  proper,  instead  of  troubling  all 
the  world  with  them,  he  suggested.  In  expressing  these 
sentiments,  Franklin  was  but  preaching  what  he  had 
actually  practised  in  the  management  of  the  Pennsylvania 
Gazette.     This    fact    imparts    additional    authority    to 


342       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

the  pungent  observations  on  the  liberty  of  the  press 
contained  in  one  of  the  last  papers  that  he  ever  wrote, 
namely,  his  Account  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Judicature 
in  Pennsylvania,  viz:  the  Court  of  the  Press.  In  this 
paper,  he  arraigns  the  license  of  the  press  in  his  half- 
serious,  half-jocular  fashion  with  undiminished  vigor, 
and  ends  with  the  recommendation  to  the  Legislature  that, 
if  the  right  of  retaliation  by  the  citizen  was  not  to  be  left 
unregulated,  it  should  take  up  the  consideration  of  both 
liberties,  that  of  the  press  and  that  of  the  cudgel,  and 
by  an  explicit  law  mark  their  extent  and  limits. 

Doctor  Cadwallader  Evans  of  Philadelphia  was  also  on 
a  sufficiently  affectionate  footing  with  Franklin  for  the 
latter  to  speak  of  him  as  his  "good  old  friend."  When 
news  of  his  death  reached  Franklin  in  London  in  1773, 
the  event  awakened  a  train  of  reflection  in  his  mind  which 
led  him  to  write  to  his  son  that,  if  he  found  himself  on  his 
return  to  America,  as  he  feared  he  would  do,  a  stranger 
among  strangers,  he  would  have  to  go  back  to  his  friends 
in  England. 

Dr.  Evans'  idea  of  establishing  a  medical  library  at  the 
Hospital  was  so  grateful  to  Franklin's  untiring  public 
spirit  that,  as  soon  as  he  heard  of  it  from  Dr.  Evans,  he 
sent  him  at  once  the  only  medical  book  that  he  had,  and 
took  steps  to  solicit  other  donations  of  such  books  for  the 
purpose  in  England.  There  are  some  instructive  ob- 
servations on  political  and  medical  subjects  in  his  earlier 
letters  to  Dr.  Evans,  but  his  later  ones  are  mainly  given 
over  to  the  movement  for  the  production  of  silk  in  Penn- 
sylvania in  which  Dr.  Evans  was  deeply  interested.  The 
industry,  intelligence  and  enthusiasm  with  which  Frank- 
lin seconded  his  efforts  to  make  the  exotic  nursling  a 
success  is  one  of  the  many  laudable  things  in  his  career. 

Another  close  friend  of  Franklin  was  Abel  James,  a 
Quaker,  and  an  active  member  of  the  society  in  Penn- 
sylvania for  the  manufacture  of  silk,  or  the  Filature,  as  it 


Franklin's  American  Friends  343 

was  called.  When  he  returned  to  England  in  1764,  Abel 
James,  Thomas  Wharton  and  Joseph  Galloway  were  the 
friends  who  were  so  loath  to  part  with  him  that  they  even 
boarded  his  ship  at  Chester,  and  accompanied  him  as  far 
as  New  Castle.  The  enduring  claim  of  James  upon  the 
attention  of  posterity  consists  in  the  fact  that  he  was  so 
lucky,  when  the  books  and  papers,  entrusted  by  Franklin 
to  the  care  of  Joseph  Galloway  were  raided,  as  to  recover 
the  manuscript  of  the  first  twenty-three  pages  of  the 
Autobiography,  which  brought  the  life  of  Franklin  down 
to  the  year  1730.  Subsequently  he  sent  a  copy  to  "his 
dear  and  honored  friend,"  with  a  letter  urging  him  to 
complete  the  work.  "What  will  the  world  say,"  he 
asked,  "if  kind,  humane  and  benevolent  Ben.  Franklin 
should  leave  his  friends  and  the  world  deprived  of  so 
pleasing  and  profitable  a  work;  a  work  which  would  be 
useful  and  entertaining  not  only  to  a  few,  but  to  millions?  " 
The  names  of  Thomas  Wharton  and  Samuel  Wharton, 
two  Philadelphia  friends  of  Franklin,  are  more  than  once 
coupled  together  in  Franklin's  letters.  Thomas  Wharton 
was  a  partner  of  Galloway  and  Goddard  in  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Philadelphia  Chronicle.  It  was  his  woollen 
gown  that  Franklin  found  such  a  comfortable  companion 
on  his  winter  voyage.  He  would  seem  to  have  been  the 
same  kind  of  robust  invalid  as  the  neurasthenic  who 
insisted  that  he  was  dying  of  consumption  until  he  grew 
so  stout  that  he  had  to  refer  his  imaginary  ill-health  to 
dropsy. 

Our  friend  W —  [Franklin  wrote  to  Dr.  Evans],  who  is  always 
complaining  of  a  constant  fever,  looks  nevertheless  fresh  and 
jolly,  and  does  not  fall  away  in  the  least.  He  was  saying  the 
other  day  at  Richmond,  (where  we  were  together  dining  with 
Governor  Pownall)  that  he  had  been  pestered  with  a  fever 
almost  continually  for  these  three  years  past,  and  that  it  gave 
way  to  no  medicines,  all  he  had  taken,  advised  by  different 
physicians,  having  never  any  effect  towards  removing  it. 


344       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

On  which  I  asked  him,  if  it  was  not  now  time  to  inquire, 
whether  he  had  really  any  fever  at  all.  He  is  indeed  the 
only  instance  I  ever  knew,  of  a  man's  growing  fat  upon  a 
fever. 

It  was  with  the  assistance  of  Thomas  Wharton  that 
Thomas  Livezy,  a  Pennsylvania  Quaker,  sent  Franklin  a 
dozen  bottles  of  wine,  made  of  the  "small  wild  grape" 
of  America,  accompanied  by  a  letter,  which  Franklin 
with  his  penchant  for  good  stories,  must  have  enjoyed 
even  more  than  the  wine.  Referring  to  the  plan  of  con- 
verting the  government  of  Pennsylvania  from  a  Pro- 
prietary into  a  Royal  one,  Livezy  wrote  that,  if  it  was 
true  that  there  would  be  no  change  until  the  death  of 
Thomas  Penn,  he  did  not  know  but  that  some  people  in 
the  Province  would  be  in  the  same  condition  as  a  Ger- 
man's wife  in  his  neighborhood  lately  was  "who  said 
nobody  could  say  she  wished  her  husband  dead,  but  said, 
she  wished  she  could  see  how  he  would  look  when  he  was 
dead."  "I  honestly  confess,"  Livezy  went  on  to  say, 
"I  do  not  wish  him  (Penn)  to  die  against  his  will,  but,  if 
he  could  be  prevailed  on  to  die  for  the  good  of  the  people, 
it  might  perhaps  make  his  name  as  immortal  as  Samson's 
death  did  his,  and  gain  him  more  applause  here  than  all 
the  acts  which  he  has  ever  done  in  his  life." 

The  humor  of  Franklin's  reply,  if  humor  it  can  be  termed, 
was  more  sardonic. 

The  Partizans  of  the  present  [he  said]  may  as  you  say 
flatter  themselves  that  such  Change  will  not  take  place, 
till  the  Proprietor's  death,  but  I  imagine  he  hardly  thinks 
so  himself.  Anxiety  and  uneasiness  are  painted  on  his  brow 
and  the  woman  who  would  like  to  see  how  he  would  look 
when  dead,  need  only  look  at  him  while  living. 

With  Samuel  Wharton,  Franklin  was  intimate  enough 
to  soothe  his  gout-ridden  feet  with  a  pair  of  "Gouty 
Shoes"  given  or  lent  to  him  by  Wharton.     This  Wharton 


Franklin's  American  Friends  345 

was  with  him  one  of  the  chief  promoters  of  the  Ohio  settle- 
ment, of  which  the  reader  will  learn  more  later,  and  the 
project  was  brought  near  enough  to  success  by  Franklin 
for  his  over-zealous  friends  to  sow  the  seeds  of  what 
might  have  been  a  misunderstanding  between  him  and 
Wharton,  if  Franklin  had  not  been  so  healthy-minded,  by 
claiming  that  the  credit  for  the  prospective  success  of  the 
project  would  belong  to  Wharton  rather  than  to  Franklin. 
But,  as  Franklin  said,  many  things  happen  between  the 
cup  and  the  lip,  and  enough  happened  in  this  case  to 
make  the  issue  a  wholly  vain  one.  Subsequently  we  know 
that  Franklin  in  one  letter  asked  John  Paul  Jones  to 
remember  him  affectionately  to  Wharton  and  in  another 
referred  to  Wharton  as  a  "particular  friend  of  his." 
His  feelings,  it  is  needless  to  say,  underwent  a  decided 
change  when  later  the  fact  was  brought  to  his  attention 
that  Wharton  had  converted  to  his  own  use  a  sum  of 
money  placed  in  his  hands  by  Jan  Ingenhousz,  one  of  the 
most  highly-prized  of  all  Franklin's  friends. 

There  is  a  thrust  at  Parliament  in  a  letter  from  Franklin 
to  Samuel  Wharton,  written  at  Passy,  which  is  too  keen  not 
to  be  recalled.  He  is  describing  the  Lord  George  Gordon 
riots,  during  which  Lord  Mansfield's  house  was  destroyed. 

If  they  had  done  no  other  Mischief  [said  Franklin],  I  would 
have  more  easily  excused  them,  as  he  has  been  an  eminent 
Promoter  of  the  American  War,  and  it  is  not  amiss  that  those 
who  have  approved  the  Burning  our  poor  People's  Houses 
and  Towns  should  taste  a  little  of  the  Effects  of  Fire  themselves. 
But  they  turn'd  all  the  Thieves  and  Robbers  out  of  Newgate 
to  the  Number  of  three  hundred,  and  instead  of  replacing 
them  with  an  equal  Number  of  other  Plunderers  of  the  Pub- 
lick,  which  they  might  easily  have  found  among  the  Members 
of  Parliament,  they  burnt  the  Building. 

The  relations  between  Franklin  and  Ebenezer  Kin- 
nersley,  who  shared  his  enthusiasm  for  electrical  experi- 


346       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

ments,  John  Foxcroft,  who  became  his  colleague,  as 
Deputy  Postmaster- General  for  America  after  the  death  of 
Colonel  Hunter,  and  the  Rev.  Thomas  Coombe,  the  assist- 
ant minister  of  Christ  Church  and  St.  Peter's  in  Philadel- 
phia, were  of  an  affectionate  nature,  but  there  is  little  of 
salient  interest  to  be  said  about  these  relations.  Malice 
has  asserted  that  Franklin  did  not  give  Kinnersley  due 
credit  for  ideas  that  he  borrowed  from  him  in  his  electri- 
cal experiments.  If  so,  Kinnersley  must  have  had  a 
relish  for  harsh  treatment,  for  in  a  letter  to  Franklin, 
when  speaking  of  the  lightning  rod,  he  exclaimed,  "May 
it  extend  to  the  latest  posterity  of  mankind,  and  make 
the  name  of  franklin  like  that  of  newton  immortal!" 

James  Wright,  and  his  sister,  Susannah  Wright,  who 
resided  at  Hempfield,  near  Wright's  Ferry,  Pennsylvania, 
were  likewise  good  friends  of  Franklin.  Part  at  any 
rate  of  the  flour,  on  which  Braddock's  army  subsisted, 
was  supplied  by  a  mill  erected  by  James  Wright  near  the 
mouth  of  the  Shawanese  Run.  Susannah  Wright  was 
a  woman  of  parts,  interested  in  silk  culture,  and  fond  of 
reading.  On  one  occasion,  Franklin  sends  her  from 
Philadelphia  a  couple  of  pamphlets  refuting  the  charges 
of  plagiarism  preferred  by  William  Lauder  against  the 
memory  of  Milton  and  a  book  or.  tract  entitled  Christianity 
not  Founded  on  Argument.  On  another  occasion,  in  a 
letter  from  London  to  Deborah,  he  mentions,  as  part  of 
the  contents  of  a  box  that  he  was  transmitting  to  America, 
some  pamphlets  for  the  Speaker  and  "Susy"  Wright. 
Another  gift  to  her  was  a  specimen  of  a  new  kind  of  candles, 
"very  convenient  to  read  by."  She  would  find,  he  said, 
that  they  afforded  a  clear  white  light,  might  be  held  in 
the  hand  even  in  hot  weather  without  softening,  did  not 
make  grease  spots  with  their  drops  like  those  made  by 
common  candles,  and  lasted  much  longer,  and  needed 
little  or  no  snuffing. 

A  sentiment  of  cordial  friendship  also  existed  between 


Franklin's  American  Friends  347 

Franklin  and  Anthony  Benezet,  a  Philadelphia  Quaker, 
born  in  France,  who  labored  throughout  his  life  with 
untiring  zeal  for  the  abolition  of  the  Slave  Trade.  This 
trade,  in  the  opinion  of  Franklin,  not  only  disgraced  the 
Colonies,  but,  without  producing  any  equivalent  benefit, 
was  dangerous  to  their  very  existence.  When  actually 
engaged  in  business,  as  a  printer,  no  less  than  two  books, 
aimed  at  the  abolition  of  Slavery,  one  by  Ralph  Sandy- 
ford,  and  the  other  by  Benjamin  Lay,  both  Quakers, 
were  published  by  him.  The  fact  that  Sandyford's 
book  was  published  before  1730  and  Lay's  as  early  as 
1736,  led  Franklin  to  say  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  in  1789, 
when  the  feeling  against  Slavery  was  much  more  wide- 
spread, that  the  headway,  which  it  had  obtained,  was  some 
confirmation  of  Lord  Bacon's  observation  that  a  good 
motion  never  dies — the  same  reflection,  by  the  way,  with 
which  he  consoled  himself  when  his  abridgment  of  the 
Book  of  Common  Prayer  fell  still-born. 

When  Franklin  took  a  friend  to  his  bosom,  it  was 
usually,  as  he  took  Deborah,  for  life.  But  Joseph 
Galloway,  one  of  his  Philadelphia  friends,  was  an  excep- 
tion to  this  rule.  When  Galloway  decided  to  cast  his 
lot  with  the  Loyalists,  after  Franklin,  in  a  feeling  letter 
to  him,  had  painted  their  "rising  country"  in  auroral 
colors,  Franklin  simply  let  him  lapse  into  the  general 
mass  of  detested  Tories.  Previously,  his  letters  to 
Galloway,  while  attended  with  but  few  personal  details, 
had  been  of  a  character  to  indicate  that  he  not  only  enter- 
tained a  very  high  estimate  of  Galloway's  abilities  but 
cherished  for  him  the  warmest  feeling  of  affection.  In- 
deed, in  assuring  Galloway  of  this  affection,  he  sometimes 
used  a  term  as  strong  as  "  unalterable."  When  Galloway 
at  the  age  of  forty  thought  of  retiring  from  public  life, 
Franklin  told  him  that  it  would  be  in  his  opinion  something 
criminal  to  bury  in  private  retirement  so  early  all  the 
usefulness  of  so  much  experience  and  such  great  abilities. 


34$       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Several  years  before  he  had  written  to  Cadwallader  Evans 
that  he  did  not  see  that  Galloway  could  be  spared  from  the 
Assembly  without  great  detriment  to  their  affairs  and  to 
the  general  welfare  of  America.  Among  the  most  valuable 
of  his  letters,  are  his  letters  to  Galloway  on  political  condi- 
tions in  England  when  the  latter  was  the  Speaker  of  the 
Pennsylvania  Assembly.  In  one  he  expresses  the  hope 
that  a  few  months  would  bring  them  together,  and 
hazards  the  belief  that,  in  the  calm  retirement  of  Trevose, 
Galloway's  country  place,  they  might  perhaps  spend 
some  hours  usefully  in  conversation  over  the  proper 
constitution  for  the  American  Colonies.  When  Franklin 
learned  from  his  son  that  hints  had  reached  the  latter 
that  Galloway's  friendship  for  Franklin  had  been  chilled 
by  the  fear  that  he  and  Franklin  would  be  rivals  for  the 
same  office,  Franklin  replied  by  stating  that,  if  this  office 
would  be  agreeable  to  Galloway,  he  heartily  wished  it 
for  him. 

No  insinuations  of  the  kind  you  mention  [he  said],  con- 
cerning Mr.  G., —  have  reached  me,  and,  if  they  had,  it  would 
have  been  without  the  least  effect;  as  I  have  always  had 
the  strongest  reliance  on  the  steadiness  of  his  friendship, 
and  on  the  best  grounds,  the  knowledge  I  have  of  his  integrity, 
and  the  often  repeated  disinterested  services  he  has  rendered 
me. 

In  another  letter  to  his  son,  he  said,  "I  cast  my  eye 
over  Goddard's  Piece  against  our  friend  Mr.  Galloway, 
and  then  lit  my  Fire  with  it." 

The  shadow  of  the  approaching  cloud  is  first  noticed  in  a 
letter  to  Galloway  in  1775,  in  which  Franklin  asks  him 
for  permission  to  hint  to  him  that  it  was  whispered  in 
London  by  ministerial  people  that  he  and  Mr.  Jay  of 
New  York  were  friends  to  their  measures,  and  gave  them 
private  intelligence  of  the  views  of  the  Popular  Party. 
While  at   Passy,   Franklin  informed   the   Congressional 


Franklin's  American  Friends  349 

Committee  on  Foreign  Affairs  that  General  and  Lord 
Howe,  Generals  Cornwallis  and  Grey  and  other  British 
officers  had  formally  given  it  as  their  opinion  in  Parlia- 
ment that  the  conquest  of  America  was  impracticable, 
and  that  Galloway  and  other  American  Loyalists  were  to 
be  examined  that  week  to  prove  the  contrary.  "One 
would  think  the  first  Set  were  likely  to  be  the  best  Judges, " 
he  adds  with  acidulous  brevity.  Later  on,  he  did  not 
dispose  of  Galloway  so  concisely.  In  a  letter  to  Richard 
Bache,  after  suggesting  that  some  of  his  missing  letter 
books  might  be  recovered  by  inquiry  in  the  vicinity  of 
Galloway's  country  seat,  he  says,  smarting  partly  under 
the  loss  of  his  letter  books,  and  partly  under  the  decep- 
tion that  Galloway  had  practised  upon  him : 

I  should  not  have  left  them  in  his  Hands,  if  he  had  not 
deceiv'd  me,  by  saying,  that,  though  he  was  before  otherwise 
inclin'd,  yet  that,  since  the  King  had  declar'd  us  out  of  his 
Protection,  and  the  Parliament  by  an  Act  had  made  our  Pro- 
perties Plunder,  he  would  go  as  far  in  the  Defence  of  his 
Country  as  any  man;  and  accordingly  he  had  lately  with 
Pleasure  given  Colours  to  a  Regiment  of  Militia,  and  an 
Entertainment  to  400  of  them  before  his  House.  I  thought 
he  was  become  a  stanch  Friend  to  the  glorious  Cause.  I  was 
mistaken.  As  he  was  a  Friend  of  my  Son's,  to  whom  in  my 
Will  I  had  Left  all  my  Books  and  Papers,  I  made  him  one 
of  my  Executors,  and  put  the  Trunk  of  Papers  into  his  Hands, 
imagining  them  safer  in  his  House  (which  was  out  of  the  way  of 
any  probable  March  of  the  enemies'  Troops)  than  in  my  own. 

The  correspondence  between  Franklin  and  Galloway  is 
enlivened  by  only  a  single  gleam  of  Franklin's  humor. 
This  was  kindled  by  the  protracted  uncertainty  which 
attended  the  application  of  his  associates  and  himself  to 
the  British  Crown  for  the  Ohio  grant. 

The  Affair  of  the  Grant  [Franklin  wrote  to  Galloway] 
goes  on  but  slowly.     I  do  not  yet  clearly  see  Land.     I  begin 


350       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

to  be  a  little  of  the  Sailor's  Mind  when  they  were  handing 
a  Cable  out  of  a  Store  into  a  Ship,  and  one  of  'em  said:  "  Tis 
a  long,  heavy  Cable.  I  wish  we  could  see  the  End  of  it." 
"D-n  me,"  says  another,  "if  I  believe  it  has  any  End; 
somebody  has  cut  it  off."1 

James  Logan,  the  accomplished  Quaker  scholar,  David 
Hall,  Franklin's  business  partner,  and  Charles  Thomson, 
the  Secretary  of  Congress,  were  other  residents  of  Pennsyl- 
vania, with  whom  Franklin  was  connected  by  ties  of 
friendship,  and  we  shall  have  occasion  to  speak  of  them 
again  when  we  come  to  his  business  and  political  career. 
"You  will  give  an  old  man  leave  to  say,  My  Love  to  Mrs. 
Thompson,"  was  a  closing  sentence  in  one  of  his  letters 
to  Charles  Thomson. 

David  Rittenhouse,  of  Philadelphia,  the  celebrated 
astronomer  was  also  a  dear  friend  of  his. 

Of  his  New  York  friends,  John  Jay  was  the  one,  of  whom 
he  was  fondest,  and  this  friendship  included  the  whole 
of  Jay's  family.  In  a  letter  from  Passy  to  Jay,  shortly 
after  Jay  arrived  at  Madrid,  as  our  minister  plenipotentiary 
to  Spain,  he  tells  him  that  he  sends  for  Mrs.  Jay  at  her 
request  a  print  of  himself. 

The  Verses  at  the  bottom  [he  wrote]  are  truly  extravagant. 
But  you  must  know,  that  the  Desire  of  pleasing,  by  a  per- 
petual rise  of  Compliments  in  this  polite  Nation,  has  so  us'd 
up  all  the  common  Expressions  of  Approbation,  that  they  are 
become  flat  and  insipid,  and  to  use  them  almost  implies 
Censure.  Hence  Musick,  that  formerly  might  be  sufficiently 
prais'd  when  it  was  called  bonne,  to  go  a  little  farther  they 
call'd  it  exccllente,  then  superbe,  magniftque,  exquise,  celeste, 
all  which  being  in  their  turns  worn  out,  there  only  remains 
divine;  and,  when  that  is  grown  as  insignificant  as  its  Pre- 
decessors, I  think  they  must  return  to  common  Speech  and 

1  "The  ship  Ohio  still  aground,"  is  the  manner  in  which  Franklin  com- 
municated on  one  occasion  to  Galloway  the  slow  progress  that  the  applica- 
tion for  the  Ohio  grant  was  making. 


Franklin's  American  Friends  351 


common  Sense;  as  from  vying  with  one  another  in  fine  and 
costly  Paintings  on  their  Coaches,  since  I  first  knew  the  Coun- 
try, not  being  able  to  go  farther  in  that  Way,  they  have 
returned  lately  to  plain  Carriages,  painted  without  Arms  or 
Figures,  in  one  uniform  Colour. 

In  a  subsequent  letter,  Franklin  informs  Jay  that, 
through  the  assistance  of  the  French  Court,  he  is  in  a 
position  to  honor  the  drafts  of  Jay  to  the  extent  of  $25,000. 
"If  you  find  any  Inclination  to  hug  me  for  the  good 
News  of  this  Letter,* '  he  concluded,  "I  constitute  and 
appoint  Mrs.  Jay  my  Attorney,  to  receive  in  my  Behalf 
your  embraces.' ' 

Afterwards  Jay  was  appointed  one  of  our  Commissioners 
to  negotiate  the  treaty  of  peace  with  Great  Britain,  and 
he  and  his  family  settled  down  under  the  same  roof  with 
Franklin  at  Passy.  The  result  was  a  mutual  feeling  of 
attachment,  so  strong  that  when  Jay  returned  to  America 
Franklin  could  write  to  him  of  a  kind  letter  that  he  had 
received  from  him:  "It  gave  me  Pleasure  on  two  Ac- 
counts; as  it  inform'd  me  of  the  public  Welfare,  and  that 
of  your,  I  may  almost  say  our  dear  little  Family ;  for,  since 
I  had  the  Pleasure  of  their  being  with  me  in  the  same 
House,  I  have  ever  felt  a  tender  Affection  for  them,  equal  I 
believe  to  that  of  most  Fathers."  In  other  letters  to  Jay, 
there  are  repeated  references  by  Franklin  to  the  child  of 
Jay  mentioned  above  whose  singular  attachment  to  him, 
he  said,  he  would  always  remember.  "Embrace  my  little 
Friend  for  me, "  he  wrote  to  Jay  and  his  wife,  when  he  was 
wishing  them  a  prosperous  return  voyage  to  America,  and, 
in  a  later  letter,  after  his  own  return  to  America,  to  the 
same  pair,  he  said  he  was  so  well  as  to  think  it  possible 
that  he  might  once  more  have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  them 
both  at  New  York,  with  his  dear  young  friend,  who,  he 
hoped,  might  not  have  quite  forgotten  him. 

Beyond  the  Harlem  River,  his  friends  were  only  less 


352       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

numerous  than  they  were  in  Pennsylvania.  Among  the 
most  conspicuous  were  Josiah  Quincy,  John  Winthrop, 
Professor  of  Mathematics  and  Natural  Philosophy  at 
Harvard  College,  and  Dr.  Samuel  Cooper,  the  celebrated 
clergyman  and  patriot.  We  mention  these  three  Boston 
friends  of  his  first  because  they  were  feelingly  grouped 
in  a  letter  that  he  wrote  to  James  Bowdoin,  another 
valued  Boston  friend  of  his,  towards  the  close  of 
his  life.  In  this  letter,  he  tells  Bowdoin  that  it  had 
given  him  great  pleasure  to  receive  his  kind  letter,  as  it 
proved  that  all  his  friends  in  Boston  were  not  estranged 
from  him  by  the  malevolent  misrepresentations  of  his 
conduct  that  had  been  circulated  there,  but  that  one  of  the 
most  esteemed  still  retained  a  regard  for  him.  "  Indeed, " 
Franklin  said,  "you  are  now  almost  the  only  one  left  me 
by  nature;  Death  having,  since  we  were  last  together, 
depriv'd  me  of  my  dear  Cooper,  Winthrop,  and  Quincy." 
Winthrop,  he  had  said,  in  an  earlier  letter  to  Dr.  Cooper, 
was  one  of  the  old  friends  for  the  sake  of  whose  society 
he  wished  to  return  from  France  and  spend  the  small 
remnant  of  his  days  in  New  England.  The  friendship 
between  Quincy  and  Franklin  began  when  Franklin  was  a 
member  of  the  Pennsylvania  Assembly,  and  had  its  origin 
in  the  sum  of  ten  thousand  pounds,  which  Quincy,  as  the 
agent  of  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts,  obtained  through 
the  assistance  of  Franklin  from  the  Colony  of  Pennsylvania 
for  the  military  needs  of  the  former  colony.  Quincy, 
Franklin  said  in  the  Autobiography,  returned  thanks  to  the 
Assembly  in  a  handsome  memorial,  went  home  highly 
pleased  with  the  success  of  his  embassy,  and  ever  after 
bore  for  him  the  most  cordial  and  affectionate  friendship. 
For  Quincy's  highly  promising  son,  Josiah,  who  died 
at  sea  at  the  early  age  of  thirty-five,  Franklin  formed  a 
warm  regard  when  Josiah  came  over  to  London  during  the 
second  mission  of  Franklin  to  England.  To  the  father 
he  wrote  of  the  son  in  terms  that  were  doubtless  deeply 


Franklin's  American  Friends  353 

gratifying  to  him,  and,  in  a  letter  to  James  Bowdoin, 
he  said:  "lam  much  pleased  with  Mr.  Quincy.  It  is  a 
thousand  pities  his  strength  of  body  is  not  equal  to  his 
strength  of  mind.  His  zeal  for  the  public,  like  that  of 
David  for  God's  house,  will,  I  fear,  eat  him  up."  Later, 
when  the  younger  Quincy's  zeal  had  actually  consumed 
him,  Franklin  wrote  to  the  elder  Quincy: 

The  epitaph  on  my  dear  and  much  esteemed  young  Friend, 
is  too  well  written  to  be  capable  of  Improvement  by  any 
Corrections  of  mine.  Your  Moderation  appears  in  it,  since 
the  natural  affection  of  a  Parent  has  not  induced  you  to 
exaggerate  his  Virtues.  I  shall  always  mourn  his  Loss  with 
you ;  a  Loss  not  easily  made  up  to  his  Country. 

And  then,  referring  to  some  of  the  falsehoods  in  circula- 
tion about  his  own  conduct  as  Commissioner,  he  exclaimed : 
"How  differently  constituted  was  his  noble  and  generous 
Mind  from  that  of  the  miserable  Calumniators  you  men- 
tion! Having  Plenty  of  Merit  in  himself,  he  was  not 
jealous  of  the  Appearance  of  Merit  in  others,  but  did 
Justice  to  their  Characters  with  as  much  Pleasure  as  these 
People  do  Injury." 

When  he  sat  down  at  Saratoga  to  write  to  a  few  friends 
by  way  of  farewell,  fearing  that  the  mission  to  Canada 
at  his  time  of  life  would  prove  too  much  for  him,  Quincy 
was  the  first  of  his  New  England  friends  to  whom  he  sent 
an  adieu. 

To  Dr.  Samuel  Cooper,  Franklin  wrote  some  of  the 
most  valuable  of  all  his  political  letters,  but  the  corre- 
spondence between  them  is  marked  by  few  details  of  a 
personal  or  social  nature.  It  was  upon  the  recommenda- 
tion of  Franklin  that  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity 
was  conferred  upon  Cooper  by  the  University  of  Edin- 
burgh. "The  Part  I  took  in  the  Application  for  your 
Degree,"  he  wrote  to  Dr.  Cooper,  "was  merely  doing 
justice  to  Merit,  which  is  the  Duty  of  an  honest  Man 

VOL.  1—23 


354       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

whenever  he  has  the  Opportunity.' '  That  Dr.  Cooper 
was  duly  grateful,  we  may  infer,  among  other  things, 
from  a  letter  in  which  Franklin  tells  his  sister  Jane  that 
he  is  obliged  to  good  Dr.  Cooper  for  his  prayers.  That  he 
was  able  to  hold  his  own  even  with  such  a  skilful  dispenser 
of  compliments  as  Franklin  himself  we  may  readily  believe 
after  reading  the  letter  to  Franklin  in  which  he  used  these 
words:  "You  once  told  me  in  a  letter,  as  you  were  going 
to  France,  the  public  had  had  the  eating  your  flesh  and 
seemed  resolved  to  pick  your  bones — we  all  agree  the 
nearer  the  bone  the  sweeter  the  meat."  It  was  to  Dr. 
Cooper  that  Franklin  expressed  the  hope  that  America 
would  never  deserve  the  reproof  administered  to  an 
enthusiastical  knave  in  Pennsylvania,  who,  when  asked 
by  his  creditor  to  give  him  a  bond  and  pay  him  interest, 
replied: 

No,  I  cannot  do  that;  I  cannot  in  conscience  either  receive 
or  pay  Interest,  it  is  against  my  Principle.  You  have  then 
the  Conscience  of  a  Rogue,  says  the  Creditor:  You  tell  me  it 
is  against  your  Principle  to  pay  Interest ;  and  it  being  against 
your  Interest  to  pay  the  Principal,  I  perceive  you  do  not 
intend  to  pay  me  either  one  or  t'other. 

The  letters  of  Franklin  to  James  Bowdoin  are  full  of 
interest,  but  the  interest  is  scientific. 

Another  Boston  friend  of  Franklin  was  Mather  Byles. 
In  a  letter  to  him,  Franklin  expresses  his  pleasure  at 
learning  that  the  lives  of  Byles  and  his  daughters  had  been 
protected  by  his  " points,"  and  his  regret  that  electricity 
had  not  really  proved  what  it  was  at  first  supposed  to 
be — a  cure  for  the  palsy. 

It  is  however  happy  for  you  [Franklin  said],  that,  when 
Old  Age  and  that  Malady  have  concurr'd  to  infeeble  you, 
and  to  disable  you  for  Writing,  you  have  a  Daughter  at 
hand  to  nurse  you  with  filial  Attention,  and  to  be  your  Secre- 


Franklin's  American  Friends  355 

tary,  of  which  I  see  she  is  very  capable,  by  the  Elegance  and 
Correctness  of  her  Writing  in  the  Letter  I  am  now  answering. 

Other  letters  from  Franklin  to  Byles  have  unhappily 
perished.  This  fact  is  brought  to  our  knowledge  by  a 
letter  from  him  to  Elizabeth  Partridge,  which  shows 
that  even  the  famous  letter  to  her,  in  which  he  spoke  of  the 
end  of  his  brother  as  if  he  had  gone  off  quietly  from  a 
party  of  pleasure  in  a  sedan  chair,  led  for  a  time  a  pre- 
carious existence.  If  this  was  the  letter,  he  said,  of  which 
she  desired  a  copy,  he  fancied  that  she  might  possibly 
find  it  in  Boston,  as  Dr.  Byles  once  wrote  to  him  that  many 
copies  had  been  taken  of  it.  Then  follows  this  playful  and 
characteristic  touch.  "I  too,  should  have  been  glad  to 
have  seen  that  again,  among  others  I  had  written  to  him 
and  you.  But  you  inform  me  they  were  eaten  by  the 
Mice.  Poor  little  innocent  Creatures,  I  am  sorry  they  had 
no  better  Food.  But  since  they  like  my  Letters,  here  is 
another  Treat  for  them." 

Another  Massachusetts  friend  of  Franklin  was  Samuel 
Danforth,  the  President  of  its  Colonial  Council.  "It 
gave  me  great  pleasure,"  Franklin  wrote  to  this  friend 
on  one  occasion,  "to  receive  so  chearful  an  Epistle  from  a 
Friend  of  half  a  Century's  Standing,  and  to  see  him  com- 
mencing Life  anew  in  so  valuable  a  Son."  When  this 
letter  was  written,  Franklin  was  in  his  sixty-eighth  year, 
but  how  far  he  was  from  being  sated  with  the  joy  of 
living  other  passages  in  it  clearly  manifest. 

I  hope  [he  said]  for  the  great  Pleasure  of  once  more  seeing 
and  conversing  with  you:  And  tho'  living-on  in  one's  Chil- 
dren, as  we  both  may  do,  is  a  good  thing,  I  cannot  but  fancy 
it  might  be  better  to  continue  living  ourselves  at  the  same 
time.  I  rejoice, 'therefore,  in  your  kind  Intentions  of  including 
me  in  the  Benefits  of  that  inestimable  Stone,  which,  curing  all 
Diseases  (even  old  Age  itself)  will  enable  us  to  see  the  future 
glorious  state  of  our  America,  enjoying  in  full  security  her  own 


356       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Liberties,  and  offering  in  her  Bosom  a  Participation  of  them  to 
all  the  oppress'd  of  other  Nations.  I  anticipate  the  jolly 
Conversation  we  and  twenty  more  of  our  Friends  may  have 
ioo  Years  hence  on  this  subject,  over  that  well  replenish'd 
Bowl  at  Cambridge  Commencement. 


In  Connecticut,  too,  Franklin  had  some  highly  prized 
friends.  Among  them  were  Jared  Eliot,  the  grandson  of 
Apostle  Eliot,  and  the  author  of  an  essay  upon  Field 
Husbandry  in  New  England,  Ezra  Stiles,  President  of 
Yale  College,  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  and  Jared  Ingersoll. 
The  letters  from  Franklin  to  Eliot  are  a  charming  melange 
of  what  is  now  known  as  Popular  Science  and  Agriculture. 
To  Franklin  there  was  philosophy  even  in  the  roasting 
of  an  egg,  and  for  agriculture  he  had  the  partiality  which 
no  one,  so  close  to  all  the  pulsations  of  nature  as  he  was, 
can  fail  to  entertain.  When  he  heard  from  his  friend 
Mrs.  Catherine  Greene  that  her  son  Ray  was  "smart  in 
the  farming  way,"  he  wrote  to  her,  "I  think  agriculture 
the  most  honourable  of  all  employments,  being  the  most 
independent.  The  farmer  has  no  need  of  popular  favour, 
nor  the  favour  of  the  great;  the  success  of  his  crops  de- 
pending only  on  the  blessing  of  God  upon  his  honest 
industry."  Franklin,  of  course,  was  writing  before  the 
day  of  the  trust,  the  high  protective  tariff,  the  San  Jose 
scale  and  the  boll  weevil. 

In  one  letter  to  Eliot  he  gossips  delightfully  upon  such 
diverse  topics  as  the  price  of  linseed  oil,  the  kind  of  land  on 
which  Pennsylvania  hemp  was  raised,  the  recent  weather, 
northeast  storms,  the  origin  of  springs,  sea-shell  strata 
and  import  duties.  Something  is  also  said  in  the  letter 
about  grass  seed,  and  it  is  curious  to  note  that  apparently 
Franklin  was  not  aware  that  in  parts  of  New  England 
timothy  has  always  been  known  as  herd's-grass.  And 
this  reminds  us  that  he  repeatedly  in  his  later  life  protested 
against  the  use  in  New  England  of  the  word  " improve" 


Franklin's  American  Friends  357 

in  the.  sense  of  " employ"  as  a  barbarous  innovation, 
when  in  point  of  fact  the  word  had  been  used  in  that 
sense  in  a  lampoon  in  the  Courant,  when  that  lively  sheet 
was  being  published  under  his  youthful  management. 
In  another  letter,  written  probably  in  the  year  1749, 
Franklin  tells  Eliot  that  he  had  purchased  some  eighteen 
months  before  about  three  hundred  acres  of  land  near 
Burlington,  and  was  resolved  to  improve  it  in  the  best  and 
speediest  manner.  "My  fortune,  (thank  God),"  he  said, 
"is  such  that  I  can  enjoy  all  the  necessaries  and  many  of 
the  Indulgences  of  Life;  but  I  think  that  in  Duty  to  my 
children  I  ought  so  to  manage,  that  the  profits  of  my  Farm 
may  Balance  the  loss  my  Income  will  Suffer  by  my  retreat 
to  it."  He  then  proceeds  to  narrate  to  Eliot  what  he  had 
done  to  secure  this  result;  how  he  had  scoured  up  the 
ditches  and  drains  in  one  meadow,  reduced  it  to  an  arable 
condition,  and  reaped  a  good  crop  of  oat  fodder  from  it, 
and  how  he  had  then  immediately  ploughed  the  meadow 
again  and  harrowed  it,  and  sowed  it  with  different  kinds 
of  grass  seed.  "Take  the  whole  together,"  he  said  with 
decided  satisfaction,  "it  is  well-matted,  and  looks  like  a 
green  corn-field."  He  next  tells  how  he  drained  a  round 
pond  of  twelve  acres,  and  seeded  the  soil  previously  covered 
by  it,  too.  Even  in  such  modest  operations  as  these  the 
quick  observation  and  precise  standards  of  a  man,  who 
was  perhaps  first  of  all  a  man  of  science,  are  apparent. 
He  noted  that  the  red  clover  came  up  in  four  days  and  the 
herd's-grass  in  six  days,  that  the  herd's-grass  was  less 
sensitive  to  frost  than  the  red  clover,  and  that  the  thicker 
grass  seed  is  sown  the  less  injured  by  the  frost  the  young 
grass  is  apt  to  be.  By  actual  experiment,  he  found  that 
a  bushel  of  clean  chaff  of  timothy  or  sal  em  grass  seed 
would  yield  five  quarts  of  seed.  In  another  letter  to 
Eliot  he  has  a  word  to  say  about  the  Schuyler  copper 
mine  in  New  Jersey  (the  only  valuable  copper  mine  in 
America  that  he  knew  of)  which  yielded  good  copper  and 


358       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

turned  out  vast  wealth  to  its  owners.  And  then  there  is  a 
ray  from  the  splendor  in  which  the  lordly  Schuylers  lived 
in  this  bit  of  descriptive  detail: 

Col.  John  Schuyler,  one  of  the  owners,  has  a  deer  park 
five  miles  round,  fenced  with  cedar  logs,  five  logs  high,  with 
blocks  of  wood  between.  It  contains  a  variety  of  land,  high 
and  low,  woodland  and  clear.  There  are  a  great  many  deer 
in  it;  and  he  expects  in  a  few  years  to  be  able  to  kill  two 
hundred  head  a  year,  which  will  be  a  very  profitable'  thing. 
He  has  likewise  six  hundred  acres  of  meadow,  all  within 
bank. 

The  fact  that  Col.  John  Schuyler  had  six  hundred  acres 
of  meadow  land  within  bank  was  not  lost  on  Eliot;  for 
later  Franklin  writes  to  him  again  promising  to  obtain 
from  Colonel  Schuyler  a  particular  account  of  the  method 
pursued  by  him  in  improving  this  land.  "In  return, " 
said  Franklin,  "(for  you  know  there  is  no  Trade  without 
Returns)  I  request  you  to  procure  for  me  a  particular 
Acct  of  the  manner  of  making  a  new  kind  of  Fence  we  saw 
at  Southhold,  on  Long  Island,  which  consists  of  a  Bank 
and  Hedge."  With  the  exactitude  of  an  experimental 
philosopher,  he  then  details  the  precise  particulars  that  he 
desired,  disclosing  in  doing  so  the  fact  that  Pennsylvania 
was  beginning  in  many  places  to  be  at  a  loss  for  wood  to 
fence  with.  This  statement  need  not  surprise  the  reader, 
for  in  his  Account  of  the  New-Invented  Pennsylvanian  Fire- 
places, published  some  six  years  before,  Franklin  informs 
us  that  wood,  at  that  time  the  common  fuel,  which  could 
be  formerly  obtained  at  every  man's  door,  had  then  to  be 
fetched  near  one  hundred  miles  to  some  towns,  and  made  a 
very  considerable  article  in  the  expense  of  families.  From 
this  same  essay,  we  learn  that  it  was  deemed  uncertain 
by  Franklin  whether  "Pit-Coal"  would  ever  be  discovered 
in  Pennsylvania!  In  another  letter  from  Franklin  to 
Eliot,  along  with  some  items  about  Peter  Collinson,  "a 


Franklin's  American  Friends  359 

most  benevolent,  worthy  man,  very  curious  in  botany 
and  other  branches  of  natural  history,  and  fond  of  im- 
provements in  agriculture,  &c,"  Hugh  Roberts*  high 
opinion  of  Eliot's  "Pieces,"  ditching,  the  Academy, 
barometers,  thermometers  and  hygrometers,  Franklin 
has  some  sprightly  observations  to  make  upon  the  love 
of  praise.  Rarely,  we  venture  to  say,  have  more  winning 
arguments  ever  been  urged  for  the  reversal  of  the  world's 
judgment  upon  any  point. 

"What  you  mention  concerning  the  love  of  praise  is  indeed 
very  true ;  it  reigns  more  or  less  in  every  heart ;  though  we  are 
generally  hypocrites,  in  that  respect,  and  pretend  to  dis- 
regard praise,  and  our  nice,  modest  ears  are  offended,  for- 
sooth, with  what  one  of  the  ancients  calls  the  sweetest  kind  of 
music.  This  hypocrisy  is  only  a  sacrifice  to  the  pride  of 
others,  or  to  their  envy;  both  which,  I  think,  ought  rather  to 
be  mortified.  The  same  sacrifice  we  make,  when  we  forbear 
to  praise  ourselves y  which  naturally  we  are  all  inclined  to ;  and  I 
suppose  it  was  formerly  the  fashion,  or  Virgil,  that  courtly 
writer,  would  not  have  put  a  speech  into  the  mouth  of  his 
hero,  which  now-a-days  we  should  esteem  so  great  an  in- 
decency; 

"Sum  pius  iEneas  ... 

.  .  .  fama  super  aether  a  notus. " 

One  of  the  Romans,  I  forget  who,  justified  speaking  in  his  own 
praise  by  saying,  Every  freeman  had  a  right  to  speak  what  he 
thought  of  himself  as  well  as  of  others.  That  this  is  a  natural 
inclination  appears  in  that  all  children  show  it,  and  say  freely, 
I  am  a  good  boy;  Am  I  not  a  good  girl  ?  and  the  like,  till  they 
have  been  frequently  chid,  and  told  their  trumpeter  is  dead; 
and  that  it  is  unbecoming  to  sound  their  own  praise,  &c. 
But  naturam  expellas  furcd,  tamen  usque  recurret.  Being  forbid 
to  praise  themselves,  they  learn  instead  of  it  to  censure  others ; 
which  is  only  a  roundabout  way  of  praising  themselves;  for 
condemning  the  conduct  of  another,  in  any  particular,  amounts 
to  as  much  as  saying,  i"  am  so  honest,  or  wise,  or  good,  or  pru- 


360       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

dent,  that  I  .could  not  do  or  approve  of  such  an  action.  This 
fondness  for  ourselves,  rather  than  malevolence  to  others, 
I  take  to  be  the  general  source  of  censure  and  back  biting; 
and  I  wish  men  had  not  been  taught  to  dam  up  natural  cur- 
rents, to  the  overflowing  and  damage  of  their  neighbour's 
grounds. 

Another  advantage,  methinks,  would  arise  from  freely 
speaking  our  good  thoughts  of  ourselves,  viz.  if  we  were  wrong 
in  them,  somebody  or  other  would  readily  set  us  right;  but 
now,  while  we  conceal  so  carefully  our  vain,  erroneous  self- 
opinions,  we  may  carry  them  to  our  grave,  for  who  would 
offer  physic  to  a  man  that  seems  to  be  in  health?  And  the 
privilege  of  recounting  freely  our  own  good  actions  might 
be  an  inducement  to  the  doing  of  them,  that  we  might  be 
enabled  to  speak  of  them  without  being  subject  to  be  justly 
contradicted  or  charged  with  falsehood;  whereas  now,  as  we 
are  not  allowed  to  mention  them,  and  it  is  an  uncertainty 
whether  others  will  take  due  notice  of  them  or  not,  we  are 
perhaps  the  more  indifferent  about  them;  so  that,  upon  the 
whole,  I  wish  the  out-of -fashion  practice  of  praising  ourselves 
would,  like  other  old  fashions,  come  round  into  fashion  again. 
But  this  I  fear  will  not  be  in  our  time,  so  we  must  even  be 
contented  with  what  little  praise  we  can  get  from  one  another. 
And  I  will  endeavour  to  make  you  some  amends  for  the 
trouble  of  reading  this  long  scrawl,  by  telling  you,  that  I 
have  the  sincerest  esteem  for  you,  as  an  ingenious  man  and 
a  good  one,  which  together  make  the  valuable  member  of 
society. 

It  is  letters  like  this  that  cause  us  to  feel  that,  if  it 
were  known  that  the  lost  letters  of  Franklin  were  some- 
where still  in  existence,  the  world  might  well  organize 
another  company  of  Argonauts  to  find  them. 

In  a  subsequent  letter  to  Eliot,  Franklin  thanks  him 
for  his  gift  of  Merino  wool,  and  tells  him  that  it  was  one 
Mr.  Masters  who  made  dung  of  leaves,  and  not  Mr. 
Roberts.     In  the  same  letter,  he  takes  occasion  to  let 


Franklin's  American  Friends  361 

Eliot  know  that  Peter  Collinson  has  written  to  him  that 
the  worthy,  learned  and  ingenious  Mr.  Jackson,  who  had 
been  prevailed  on  to  give  some  dissertations  on  the 
husbandry  of  Norfolk  for  the  benefit  of  the  Colonies, 
admired  Eliot's  agricultural  tracts.  In  still  another 
letter  to  Eliot,  Franklin,  true  to  the  brief  that  he  held 
for  love  of  praise,  writes  to  him  in  these  terms  of  unre- 
served gratification : 

The  Tatler  tells  us  of  a  Girl,  who  was  observed  to  grow 
suddenly  proud,  and  none  cou'd  guess  the  Reason,  till  it  came 
to  be  known  that  she  had  got  on  a  new  Pair  of  Garters.  Lest 
you  should  be  puzzled  to  guess  the  Cause,  when  you  observe 
any  Thing  of  the  kind  in  me,  I  think  I  will  not  hide  my  new 
Garters  under  my  Petticoats,  but  take  the  Freedom  to  show 
them  to  you,  in  a  paragraph  of  our  friend  Collinson's  Letter, 
viz. — But  I  ought  to  mortify,  and  not  indulge,  this  Vanity; 
I  will  not  transcribe  the  Paragraph,  yet  I  cannot  forbear. 

He  then  transcribes  the  paragraph  in  which  Collinson 
had  informed  him  that  the  Grand  Monarch  of  France 
had  commanded  the  Abbe  Mazeas  to  write  a  letter  in 
the  politest  terms  to  the  Royal  Society,  to  return  the 
King's  thanks  and  compliments  in  an  express  manner 
to  Mr.  Franklin  of  Pennsylvania  for  his  useful  discoveries 
in  electricity,  and  the  application  of  pointed  rods  to  pre- 
vent the  terrible  effect  of  thunderstorms.  "I  think,  now 
I  have  stuck  a  Feather  in  thy  Cap,"  ended  Collinson,  "I 
may  be  allowed  to  conclude  in  wishing  thee  long  to  wear 
it." 

On  reconsidering  this  Paragraph  [continued  Franklin],  I 
fear  I  have  not  so  much  Reason  to  be  proud  as  the  Girl  had; 
for  a  Feather  in  the  Cap  is  not  so  useful  a  Thing,  or  so  service- 
able to  the  Wearer,  as  a  Pair  of  good  silk  Garters.  The 
Pride  of  Man  is  very  differently  gratify 'd;  and,  had  his  Majesty 
sent  me  a  marshal's  staff,  I  think  I  should  scarce  have  been  so 
proud  of  it,  as  I  am  of  your  Esteem. 


362       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

There  were  many  principles  of  congeniality  at  work  to 
cause  Franklin  to  open  his  heart  so  familiarly  to  Eliot, 
but  one  of  the  most  active  doubtless  was  their  common 
love  of  good  stories.  "I  remember  with  Pleasure  the 
cheerful  Hours  I  enjoy'd  last  Winter  in  your  Company, " 
he  wrote  to  Eliot,  after  his  visit  to  New  England  in  1754, 
"and  would  with  all  my  heart  give  any  ten  of  the  thick  old 
Folios  that  stand  on  the  Shelves  before  me,  for  a  little  book 
of  the  Stories  you  then  told  with  so  much  Propriety  and 
Humor." 

We  have  already  referred  to  the  famous  letter,  in 
which,  Franklin,  a  few  weeks  before  his  death,  stated  his 
religious  creed  with  such  unfaltering  clearness  and  direct- 
ness to  Dr.  Ezra  Stiles,  who  had  written  to  him,  saying 
that  he  wished  to  know  the  opinion  of  his  venerable  friend 
concerning  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  expressing  the  hope 
that  he  would  not  impute  this  to  impertinence  or  improper 
curiosity  in  one,  who,  for  so  many  years,  had  continued 
to  love,  estimate  and  reverence  his  abilities  and  literary 
character  with  an  ardor  and  affection  bordering  on  adora- 
tion. In  his  reply,  Franklin  declared  that  he  had  never 
before  been  questioned  upon  religion,  and  he  asked  Dr. 
Stiles  not  to  publish  what  he  had  written. 

I  have  ever  [he  said]  let  others  enjoy  their  religious  Senti- 
ments, without  reflecting  on  them  for  those  that  appeared 
to  me  unsupportable  and  even  absurd.  All  Sects  here,  and 
we  have,  a  great  Variety,  have  experienced  my  good  will  in 
assisting  them  with  Subscriptions  for  building  their  new 
Places  of  Worship;  and,  as  I  have  never  opposed  any  of  their 
Doctrines,  I  hope  to  go  out  of  the  World  in  Peace  with  them 
all. 

This  letter  is  so  full  of  interest  for  the  reader  that  it  is 
to  be  regretted  that  Dr.  Stiles  did  not  oftener  indulge  the 
national  weakness  for  asking  questions  before  his  aged 
correspondent  went  out  of  the  world  in  peace  with  the 


Franklin's  American  Friends  363 

sects,  which  most  assuredly  would  have  followed  him  with 
a  shower  of  stones  as  thick  as  that  which  overwhelmed 
St.  Stephen,  if  they  had  known  that  the  discreet  old 
philosopher,  who  contrived  to  keep  on  such  comfortable 
working  terms  with  every  one  of  them,  doubted  all  the 
while  the  divinity  of  our  Lord.  This  letter  also  has  a 
readable  word  to  say  in  response  to  the  honor  that  Dr. 
Stiles  proposed  to  do  Franklin  by  placing  his  portrait  in 
the  same  room  at  Yale  with  that  of  Governor  Yale,  whom 
Franklin  pronounced  "a  great  and  good  man."  Yale 
College,  Franklin  gratefully  recalled,  was  the  first  learned 
society  that  took  notice  of  him,  and  adorned  him  with  its 
honors,  though  it  was  from  the  University  of  St.  Andrews 
that  he  received  the  title  which  made  him  known  to  the 
world  as  "Dr.  Franklin." 

Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  has  been  termed  "the  venerable 
father  of  the  Episcopal  Church  of  Connecticut  and  the 
apostle  of  sound  learning  and  elegant  literature  in  New 
England,"  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  Franklin  should 
have  strained  his  dialectical  skill  almost  to  the  point  of 
casuistry  in  an  effort  to  meet  the  various  reasons  which 
the  Doctor  gave  him  for  his  hesitation  about  accepting 
the  headship  of  the  Academy,  such  as  his  years,  his  fear 
of  the  small-pox,  the  politeness  of  Philadelphia  and  his 
imagined  rusticity,  his  diffidence  of  his  powers  and  his 
reluctance  about  drawing  off  parishioners  from  Dr. 
Jenney,  the  rector  of  Christ  Church  and  St.  Peters.  As 
we  have  seen,  even  the  multiplying  effect  of  setting  up 
more  than  one  pigeon  box  against  a  house  was  ineffective  to 
lure  the  apprehensive  churchman  to  Philadelphia.  In  one 
of  his  letters  to  Dr.  Johnson,  the  enthusiasm  of  Franklin 
over  the  Academy  project  endows  his  words  with  real 
nobility  of  utterance. 

I  think  with  you  [he  said],  that  nothing  is  of  more  impor- 
tance for  the  public  weal,  than  to  form  and  train  up  youth  in 


364       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

wisdom  and  virtue.  Wise  and  good  men  are,  in  my  opinion, 
the  strength  of  a  state  far  more  so  than  riches  or  arms,  which, 
under  the  management  of  Ignorance  and  Wickedness,  often  draw 
on  destruction,  instead  of  providing  for  the  safety  of  a  people. 
And  though  the  culture  bestowed  on  many  should  be  successful 
only  with  a  few,  yet  the  influence  of  those  few  and  the  service 
in  their  power  may  be  very  great.  Even  a  single  woman, 
that  was  wise,  by  her  wisdom  saved  a  city. 

I  think  also,  that  general  virtue  is  more  probably  to  be 
expected  and  obtained  from  the  education  of  youth,  than 
from  the  exhortation  of  adult  persons;  bad  habits  and  vices  of 
the  mind  being,  like  diseases  of  the  body,  more  easily  prevented 
than  cured.  I  think,  moreover,  that  talents  for  the  education 
of  youth  are  the  gift  of  God;  and  that  he  on  whom  they  are 
bestowed,  whenever  a  way  is  opened  for  the  use  of  them,  is  as 
strongly  called  as  if  he  heard  a  voice  from  heaven. 

Remarkable  words  these  to  fall  from  a  man  who,  some 
two  months  later,  in  another  letter  to  Dr.  Johnson, 
modestly  declared  himself  to  be  unfit  to  sketch  out  the 
idea  of  the  English  School  for  the  Academy,  having  neither 
been  educated  himself  (except  as  a  tradesman)  nor  ever 
been  concerned  in  educating  others,  he  said. 

Nobody  would  imagine  [said  Dr.  Johnson,  after  reading 
the  sketch,  ]  that  the  draught  you  have  made  for  an  English 
education  was  done  by  a  Tradesman.  But  so  it  sometimes 
is,  a  true  genius  will  not  content  itself  without  entering  more 
or  less  into  almost  everything,  and  of  mastering  many  things 
more  in  spite  of  fate  itself. 

The  friendship  between  Franklin  and  Jared  Ingersoli  is 
preserved  in  a  single  letter  only,  the  one  from  which  we 
have  already  quoted  in  which  Franklin  had  his  good- 
natured  jest  at  the  expense  of  the  doleful  New  England 
Sunday. 

All  of  these  friends  were  men,  but  in  Catherine  Ray, 
afterwards  the  wife  of  Governor  William  Greene  of  Rhode 


Franklin's  American  Friends  365 

Island,  and  the  mother  of  Ray  Greene,  one  of  the  early 
United  States  Senators  from  that  State,  Franklin  had  a 
friend  whose  sex  gave  a  different  turn  of  sentiment  and 
expression  to  his  pen.  His  first  letter  to  this  young  woman 
("Dear  Katy"  is  the  way  he  addresses  her)  was  written 
after  his  return  to  Philadelphia  from  a  journey  to  New 
England  in  1754.  She  then  lived  on  Block  Island,  and, 
when  he  last  saw  her,  she  was  fading  out  of  sight  on  the 
ocean  on  her  way  to  that  island  from  the  mainland. 

I  thought  too  much  was  hazarded  [he  wrote],  when  I 
saw  you  put  off  to  sea  in  that  very  little  skiff,  tossed  by  every 
wave.  But  the  call  was  strong  and  just,  a  sick  parent.  I 
stood  on  the  shore,  and  looked  after  you,  till  I  could  no  longer 
distinguish  you,  even  with  my  glass;  then  returned  to  your 
sister's,  praying  for  your  safe  passage. 

These  words  are  followed  by  the  paragraph  already 
quoted,  in  which  Franklin  acknowledged  the  affectionate 
hospitality  of  New  England  and  the  paragraph,  already 
quoted,  too,  in  which  he  spoke  of  his  being  restored  to  the 
arms  of  his  good  old  wife  and  children. 

Persons  subject  to  the  hyp  [he  continued]  complain  of  the 
northeast  wind,  as  increasing  their  malady.  But  since  you 
promised  to  send  me  kisses  in  that  wind,  and  I  find  you  as 
good  as  your  word,  it  is  to  me  the  gayest  wind  that  blows, 
and  gives  me  the  best  spirits.  I  write  this  during  a  northeast 
storm  of  snow,  the  greatest  we  have  had  this  winter.  Your 
favours  come  mixed  with  the  snowy  fleeces,  which  are  as  pure 
as  your  virgin  innocence,  white  as  your  lovely  bosom,  and 
— as  cold.  But  let  it  warm  towards  some  worthy  young  man, 
and  may  Heaven  bless  you  both  with  every  kind  of  happiness. 

The  letter  concludes  with  these  words: 

I  desired  Miss  Anna  Ward  to  send  you  over  a  little  book  I 
left-  with  her,  for  your  amusement  in  that  lonely  island.  My 
respects  to  your  good  father,  and  mother,  and  sister.     Let 


366       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

me  often  hear  of  your  welfare,  since  it  is  not  likely  I  shall  ever 
again  have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you.  Accept  mine,  and  my 
wife's  sincere  thanks  for  the  many  civilities  I  receiv'd  from 
you  and  your  relations;  and  do  me  the  justice  to  believe  me, 
dear  girl,  your  affectionate,  faithful,  friend,  and  humble 
servant. 

This  letter  was  dated  March  4,  1755,  and  was  in  reply 
to  one  from  Miss  Ray  which,  though  dated  as  far  back  as 
January  of  the  same  year,  had  just  reached  him. 

His  next  letter  was  dated  September  11,  1755,  not  long 
after  he  rendered  his  unavailing  services  to  Braddock,  and 
was  a  reply  to  three  other  letters  of  hers  of  March  3,  March 
30  and  May  1  of  that  year.  It  begins :  ' '  Begone,  business, 
for  an  hour,  at  least,  and  let  me  chat  a  little  with  my 
Katy,"  and  apologizes  for  his  belated  reply. 

Equal  returns  [he  declares],  I  can  never  make,  tho'  I  should 
write  to  you  by  every  post ;  for  the  pleasure  I  receive  from  one 
of  yours  is  more  than  you  can  have  from  two  of  mine.  The 
small  news,  the  domestic  occurrences  among  our  friends,  the 
natural  pictures  you  draw  of  persons,  the  sensible  observa- 
tions and  reflections  you  make,  and  the  easy,  chatty  manner  in 
which  you  express  everything,  all  contribute  to  heighten  the 
pleasure ;  and  the  more  as  they  remind  me  of  those  hours  and 
miles,  that  we  talked  away  so  agreeably,  even  in  a  winter 
journey,  a  wrong  road,  and  a  soaking  shower. 

In  answer  to  Miss  Ray's  inquiry  about  his  health,  he 
tells  her  that  he  still  relishes  all  the  pleasures  of  life  that  a 
temperate  man  can  in  reason  desire,  and,  through  favor, 
has  them  all  in  his  power.  In  answer  to  her  question 
as  to  whether  everybody  loved  him  yet,  and  why  he  made 
them  do  so,  he  replied: 

I  must  confess  (but  don't  you  be  jealous),  that  many  more 
people  love  me  now,  than  ever  did  before ;  for  since  I  saw  you 
I  have  been  enabled  to  do  some  general  services  to  the  coun- 


Franklin's  American  Friends  367 

try,  and  to  the  army,  for  which  both  have  thanked  and  praised 
me,  and  say  they  love  me.  They  say  so,  as  you  used  to  do; 
and  if  I  were  to  ask  any  favours  of  them,  they  would,  perhaps, 
as  readily  refuse  me;  so  that  I  find  little  real  advantage  in 
being  beloved,  but  it  pleases  my  humor.  ...  I  long  to  hear, 
[he  says  in  another  part  of  the  same  letter]  whether  you  have 
continued  ever  since  in  that  monastery  (Block  Island);  or 
have  broke  into  the  world  again,  doing  pretty  mischief;  how 
the  lady  Wards  do,  and  how  many  of  them  are  married,  or 
about  it;  what  is  become  of  Mr.  B —  and  Mr.  L — ,  and  what 
the  state  of  your  heart  is  at  this  instant?  But  that,  perhaps, 
I  ought  not  to  know;  and,  therefore,  I  will  not  conjure,,  as 
you  sometimes  say  I  do.  If  I  could  conjure,  it  should  be  to 
know  what  was  that  oddest  question  about  me  that  ever  was 
thought  of,  which  you  tell  me  a  lady  had  just  sent  to  ask  you. 
I  commend  your  prudent  resolutions,  in  the  article  of  grant- 
ing favours  to  lovers.  But,  if  I  were  courting  you,  I  could  not 
hardly  approve  such  conduct.  I  should  even  be  malicious 
enough  to  say  you  were  too  knowing,  and  tell  you  the  old 
story  of  the  Girl  and  the  Miller.  I  enclose  you  the  songs  you 
write  for,  and  with  them  your  Spanish  letter  with  a  transla- 
tion. I  honour  that  honest  Spaniard  for  loving  you.  It 
showed  the  goodness  of  his  taste  and  judgment.  But  you 
must  forget  him,  and  bless  some  worthy  young  Englishman. 

Then  comes  the  reference  to  his  Joan  (Deborah)  which 
we  have  quoted  in  another  place.  She  sends  her  respectful 
compliments  to  Miss  Ray,  he  states;  and  lastly  in  a 
postscript  he  gives  Miss  Ray  this  caution:  "As  to  your 
spelling,  don't  let  those  laughing  girls  put  you  out  of 
conceit  with  it.  It  is  the  best  in  the  world,  for  every 
letter  of  it  stands  for  something.'  ■ 

The  sincerity  of  this  conviction  he  proved  at  least  once 
on  another  occasion  by  himself  spelling  his  Katy's  first 
name  with  a  C  instead  of  a  K. 

It  is  to  be  feared  that  Miss  Ray  was  a  lively  flirt,  and  it 
is  hard  to  read  Franklin's  frequent  allusions  to  Deborah 
in  his  letters  to  her  without  suspecting  that  he  found  it 


368       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

necessary  at  times    to  use  his  wife  just  a  little  as  a 
shield. 

The  next  letter  from  Franklin  to  Miss  Ray  is  marked 
by  the  understrain  of  coarse  license,  which  ran  through 
his  character,  and  was  partly  the  note  of  his  age,  and 
partly  the  note  of  overflowing  vital  force. 

I  hear  you  are  now  in  Boston  [he  said],  gay  and  lovely  as 
usual.  Let  me  give  you  some  fatherly  Advice.  Kill  no 
more  Pigeons  than  you  can  eat — Be  a  good  Girl  and  don't 
forget  your  Catechism. — Go  constantly  to  Meeting — or 
church — till  you  get  a  good  Husband, — then  stay  at  home,  & 
nurse  the  Children,  and  live  like  a  Christian — Spend  your 
spare  Hours,  in  sober  Whisk,  Prayers,  or  learning  to  cypher — 
You  must  practise  addition  to  your  Husband's  Estate,  by  In- 
dustry &  Frugality;  subtraction  of  all  unnecessary  Expenses; 
Multiplication  (I  would  gladly  have  taught  you  that  myself, 
but  you  thought  it  was  time  enough,  &  wou'dn't  learn)  he 
will  soon  make  you  a  Mistress  of  it.  As  to  Division,  I  say 
with  Brother  Paul,  Let  there  be  no  Division  among  ye.  But  as 
your  good  Sister  Hubbard  (my  love  to  her)  is  well  acquainted 
with  The  Rule  of  Two,  I  hope  you  will  become  an  expert  in  the 
Rule  of  Three;  that  when  I  have  again  the  pleasure  of  seeing 
you,  I  may  find  you  like  my  Grape  Vine,  surrounded  with 
Clusters,  plump,  juicy,  blushing,  pretty  little  rogues,  like 
their  Mama.  Adieu.  The  Bell  rings,  and  I  must  go  among 
the  Grave  ones,  and  talk  Politics. 

Passages  like  these  are  among  the  things  which  really 
tarnish  the  reputation  of  Franklin,  and  make  us  feel  at 
times  that,  essentially  admirable  as  he  was,  in  some  respects 
he  was  compounded  of  pipe,  and  not  of  porcelain,  clay. 
The  postscript  to  this  letter,  too,  is  flavored  with  the 
rude  gallantry  of  the  husking-bee.  "The  Plums, "  it 
said,  "came  safe,  and  were  so  sweet  from  the  Cause  you 
mentioned,  that  I  could  scarce  taste  the  Sugar."  But 
when  Deputy-Postmaster  Franklin  next  writes  to  Miss 
Ray  it  is  with  the  light,  playful  grace  of  his  best  hours. 


Franklin's  American  Friends  369 

Your  Apology  [he  said]  for  being  in  Boston,  "that  you  must 
visit  that  Sister  once  a  year"  makes  me  suspect  you  are  here 
for  some  other  Reason;  for  why  should  you  think  your  being 
there  would  need  an  Excuse  to  me  when  you  knew  that  I 
knew  how  dearly  you  lov'd  that  Sister?  Don't  offer  to  hide 
your  Heart  from  me.  You  know  I  can  conjure. — Give  my 
best  respects,  to  yr  Sister,  &  tell  her  and  all  your  other  Sisters 
and  Brothers,  that  they  must  behave  very  kindly  to  you,  & 
love  you  dearly;  or  else  I'll  send  a  young  Gentleman  to  steal 
&  run  away  with  you,  who  shall  bring  you  to  a  Country  from 
whence  they  shall  never  hear  a  word  of  you,  without  paying 
Postage.  Mrs.  Franklin  joins  in  Love  to  you  &  sincere  wishes 
for  your  welfare,  with  dear  good  Girl,  your  affectionate  Friend. 

Some  six  months  later,  when  Franklin  is  on  the  eve  of 
leaving  America  on  his  first  mission  to  England,  he  writes 
briefly  to  Miss  Ray  again,  and  tells  her  he  cannot  go 
without  taking  leave  of  his  dear  friend,  and  is  ashamed  of 
having  allowed  her  last  letter  to  remain  unanswered  so 
long. 

Present  my  best  compliments  [he  adds]  to  your  good 
mamma,  brother  and  sister  Ward,  and  all  your  other  sisters, 
the  agreeable  Misses  Ward,  Dr.  Babcock  and  family,  the 
charitable  Misses  Stanton,  and,  in  short,  to  all  that  love  me. 
I  should  have  said  all  that  love  you,  but  that  would  be  giving 
you  too  much  trouble.  Adieu,  dear  good  girl,  and  believe 
me  ever  your  affectionate  friend. 

On  the  return  of  Franklin  from  England,  he  resumed  his 
correspondence  with  Miss  Ray ;  but  Miss  Ray  she  was  no 
longer,  for  the  divination  of  the  conjurer  had  not  failed 
him,  and  she  was  then  married  to  William  Greene.  In  a 
letter  to  Mrs.  Greene,  dated  January  23,  1763,  this  fact 
leads  to  another  smutty  joke  on  Franklin's  part  over  the 
arithmetic  of  matrimony,  the  worse  for  being  jestingly 
ascribed  to  Mrs.  Franklin,  who,  he  said,  accepted  Mrs. 
Greene's  apology  for  dropping  the  correspondence  with 

VOL.  I — 24 


370       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

her,  but  hoped  that  it  would  be  renewed  when  Mrs. 
Greene  had  more  leisure.  That  the  joke  should  be 
debited  to  the  manners  of  the  day  fully  as  much  as  to 
Franklin  himself,  is  made  clear  enough  by  the  fact  that  it 
is  immediately  followed  by  the  assurance  that  he  would 
not  fail  to  pay  his  respects  to  Mr.,  as  well  as  Mrs.,  Greene 
when  he  came  their  way.  "Please  to  make  my  Compli- 
ments acceptable  to  him, "  he  added.  The  conclusion  of 
this  letter  is  in  the  former  affectionate  vein.  "I  think  I 
am  not  much  alter'd;  at  least  my  Esteem  &  Regard  for 
my  Katy  (if  I  may  still  be  permitted  to  call  her  so)  is  the 
same,  and  I  believe  will  be  unalterable  whilst  I  am  B. 
Franklin." 

That  they  did  prove  unalterable  it  is  hardly  necessary 
to  say.  Some  twenty-six  years  after  the  date  of  this 
letter,  Franklin  writes  to  Mrs.  Greene:  "Among  the 
felicities  of  my  life  I  reckon  your  friendship,  which  I  shall 
remember  with  pleasure  as  long  as  that  life  lasts."  And, 
in  the  meantime,  he  had  given  Mrs.  Greene  the  proof  of 
affectionate  interest  which,  of  all  others,  perhaps,  is  most 
endearing  in  a  friend;  that  is  he  had  taken  her  children 
as  well  as  herself  to  his  heart.  After  a  brief  visit  with 
Sally  to  the  Greenes  in  1763,  he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Greene, 
"My  Compliments  too  to  Mr.  Merchant  and  Miss  Ward 
if  they  are  still  with  you;  and  kiss  the  Babies  for  me. 
Sally  says,  &  for  me  too."  This  letter  ends,  "With  perfect 
Esteem  &  Regard,  I  am,  Dear  Katy  (  I  can't  yet  alter 
my  Stile  to  Madam)  your  affectionate  friend."  In 
another  letter  to  Mrs.  Greene,  about  a  month  later, 
he  says,  "My  best  respects  to  good  Mr.  Greene,  Mrs. 
Ray,  and  love  to  your  little  ones.  I  am  glad  to  hear  they 
are  well,  and  that  your  Celia  goes  alone."  The  last 
two  letters  mentioned  by  us  were  written  from  Boston. 
Franklin's  next  letter  to  Mrs.  Greene  was  written  from 
Philadelphia,  condoles  with  her  on  the  death  of  her  mother, 
tells  her  that  his  dame  sends  her  love  to  her  with  her 


Franklin's  American  Friends  371 

thanks  for  the  care  that  she  had  taken  of  her  old  man, 
and  conveys  his  love  to  "the  little  dear  creatures."  "We 
are  all  glad  to  hear  of  Ray,  for  we  all  love  him, "  he  wrote 
to  Mrs.  Greene  from  Paris. 

In  the  same  letter,  he  said,  "  I  live  here  in  great  Respect, 
and  dine  every  day  with  great  folks;  but  I  still  long  for 
home  &  for  Repose;  and  should  be  happy  to  eat  Indian 
Pudding  in  your  Company  &  under  your  hospitable 
Roof." 

Hardly  had  he  arrived  in  America  on  his  return  from 
France  before  he  sent  this  affectionate  message  to  Mrs. 
Greene  and  her  husband:  "I  seize  this  first  Opportunity 
of  acquainting  my  dear  Friends,  that  I  have  once  more 
the  great  Happiness  of  being  at  home  in  my  own  Country, 
and  with  my  Family,  because  I  know  it  will  give  you 
Pleasure."  As  for  Mrs.  Greene,  Jane  Mecom  informed 
him  that,  when  she  heard  of  his  arrival,  she  was  so  over- 
joyed that  her  children  thought  she  was  afflicted  with 
hysteria. 

The  friendship  which  existed  between  Franklin  and  the 
Greenes  also  existed  between  them  and  his  sister  Jane, 
who  was  a  welcome  guest  under  their  roof.  "I  pity  my 
poor  old  Sister,  to  be  so  harassed  &  driven  about  by  the 
enemy,"  he  wrote  to  Mrs.  Greene  from  Paris  in  1778, 
"For  I  feel  a  little  myself  the  Inconvenience  of  being 
driven  about  by  my  friends." 


CHAPTER  VI 
FranKlin's  British  Friends 

IN  Great  Britain,  Franklin  had  almost  as  many  friends 
as  in  America.  During  his  missions  to  England,  he 
resided  at  No.  7  Craven  Street,  London,  the  home  of 
Mrs.  Margaret  Stevenson,  a  widow,  and  the  mother  of 
"Polly,"  whose  filial  relations  to  him  constituted  an  idyll 
in  his  life.  Into  all  the  interests  and  feelings  of  this 
home,  he  entered  almost  as  fully  and  sympathetically 
as  he  did  into  those  of  his  own  home  in  Philadelphia;  as  is 
charmingly  attested  by  his  Craven  Street  Gazette.  Mrs. 
Stevenson  looked  after  his  clothing,  attended  to  him 
when  he  was  sick,  and  made  the  purchases  from  time  to 
time  that  the  commissions  of  Deborah  and  Jane  Mecom 
called  for.  In  one  of  his  letters  to  Temple,  written  after 
his  return  from  his  second  mission  to  England,  Franklin 
mentions  a  long  letter  that  he  had  received  from  her  in 
the  form  of  "a  kind  of  Journal  for  a  Month  after  our 
Departure,  written  on  different  Days,  &  of  different 
Dates,  acquainting  me  who  has  call'd,  and  what  is  done, 
with  all  the  small  News.  In  four  or  five  Places,  she  sends 
her  Love  to  her  dear  Boy,  hopes  he  was  not  very  sick  at 
Sea,  &c,  &c."  This  journal  doubtless  set  forth  in  a 
matter-of-fact  way  the  daily  life  of  the  Craven  Street 
household,  which  Franklin  idealized  with  such  captivating 
vivacity  in  the  humorous  pages  of  the  Craven  Street 
Gazette.  At  the  Craven  Street  house,  he  and  his  son 
lived  in  great  comfort,  occupying  four  rooms,  and  waited 

372 


Franklin's  British  Friends  373 

upon  by  his  man-servant,  and  Billy's  negro  attendant; 
and,  when  he  moved  about  the  streets  of  London,  it  was 
in  a  modest  chariot  of  his  own.  Franklin's  letters  to 
Deborah  frequently  conveyed  affectionate  messages  from 
Mrs.  Stevenson  and  Polly  to  Deborah  and  her  daughter 
Sally.  Occasionally,  too,  presents  of  one  kind  or  another 
from  Mrs.  Stevenson  found  their  way  across  the  Atlantic 
to  Deborah  and  Sally.  Altogether,  the  Craven  Street 
house,  if  not  a  true  home  to  Franklin  in  every  sense  of 
the  word,  was  a  cheerful  semblance  of  one.  A  letter 
from  Dr.  Priestley  to  him,  which  he  received  shortly  after 
his  return  from  Canada,  during  the  American  Revolution, 
bears  witness  to  the  impression  left  by  his  amiable  traits 
upon  the  memory  of  the  good  woman  with  whom  he  had 
resided  so  long.  After  telling  Franklin  that  Franklin's 
old  servant  Fevre  often  mentioned  him  with  affection 
and  respect,  Dr.  Priestley  added,  "Mrs.  Stevenson  is 
much  as  usual.  She  can  talk  about  nothing  but  you." 
The  feeling  was  fully  returned. 

It  is  always  with  great  Pleasure  [he  wrote  to  her  from 
Passy],  when  I  think  of  our  long  continu'd  Friendship,  which 
had  not  the  least  Interruption  in  the  Course  of  Twenty  Years 
(some  of  the  happiest  of  my  Life),  that  I  spent  under  your 
Roof  and  in  your  Company.  If  I  do  not  write  to  you  as  often 
as  I  us'd  to  do,  when  I  happen'd  to  be  absent  from  you,  it  is 
owing  partly  to  the  present  Difficulty  of  sure  Communication, 
and  partly  to  an  Apprehension  of  some  possible  Inconvenience, 
that  my  Correspondence  might  occasion  you.  Be  assured,  my 
dear  Friend,  that  my  Regard,  Esteem,  and  Affection  for 
you,  are  not  in  the  least  impair'd  or  diminish'd;  and  that,  if 
Circumstances  would  permit,  nothing  would  afford  me  so 
much  Satisfaction,  as  to  be  with  you  in  the  same  House,  and  to 
experience  again  your  faithful,  tender  Care,  and  Attention  to 
my  Interests,  Health,  and  Comfortable  Living,  which  so  long 
and  steadily  attach'd  me  to  you,  and  which  I  shall  ever  re- 
member with  Gratitude. 


374       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

And,  when  the  news  of  Mrs.  Stevenson's  death  was 
communicated  to  Franklin  by  her  daughter,  the  retrospect 
of  the  last  twenty-five  years  that  it  opened  up  to  him 
framed  itself  into  these  tender  words  in  his  reply. 

During  the  greatest  Part  of  the  Time,  I  lived  in  the  same 
House  with  my  dear  deceased  Friend,  your  Mother;  of  course 
you  and  I  saw  and  convers'd  with  each  other  much  and  often. 
It  is  to  all  our  Honours,  that  in  all  that  time  we  never  had 
among  us  the  smallest  Misunderstanding.  Our  Friendship 
has  been  all  clear  Sunshine,  without  the  least  Cloud  in  its 
Hemisphere.  Let  me  conclude  by  saying  to  you,  what  I  have 
had  too  frequent  Occasions  to  say  to  my  other  remaining  old 
Friends,  "The  fewer  we  become,  the  more  let  us  love  one 
another." 

On  the  back  of  the  last  letter,  dated  July  24,  1782,  that 
he  received  from  Mrs.  Stevenson,  he  indorsed  this  memo- 
randum: "This  good  woman,  my  dear  Friend,  died  the 
first  of  January  following.     She  was  about  my  Age." 

But  the  closest  friendship  that  Franklin  formed  in 
England  was  with  Mary,  or  Polly,  Stevenson.  To  her, 
perhaps,  the  most  delightful  of  all  his  familiar  letters  were 
written — letters  so  full  of  love  and  watchful  interest 
as  to  suggest  a  father  rather  than  a  friend.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  they  are  distinguished  by  a  purity  and 
tenderness  of  feeling  almost  perfect,  and  by  a  combination 
of  delicate  humor  and  instructive  wisdom  to  which  it 
would  be  hard  to  find  a  parallel.  The  first  of  them  bears 
date  May  4,  1759,  and  the  last  bears  date  May  30,  1786. 
That  the  letters,  some  forty-six  in  number,  are  not  more 
numerous  even  than  they  are  is  due  to  the  fact  that, 
during  the  period  of  their  intercourse,  the  two  friends  were 
often  under  the  same  roof,  or,  when  they  were  not,  saw 
each  other  frequently. 

In  his  first  letter,  addressed  to  "My  Dear  Child," 
Franklin  tells  Polly,  who  was  then  about  twenty  years 


Franklin's  British  Friends  375 

of  age,  that  he  had  hoped  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  her  the 
day  before  at  the  Oratorio  in  the  Foundling  Hospital, 
but  that,  though  he  looked  with  all  the  eyes  he  had,  not 
excepting  even  those  he  carried  in  his  pocket,  he  could 
not  find  her.  He  had,  however,  he  said,  fixed  that  day 
se'nnight  for  a  little  journey  into  Essex,  and  would  take 
Mrs.  Stevenson  with  him  as  far  as  the  home  of  Mrs. 
Tickell,  Polly's  aunt,  at  Wanstead,  where  Polly  then  was, 
and  would  call  for  Mrs.  Stevenson  there  on  his  return. 
"Will,"  he  says  in  a  postscript,  "did  not  see  you  in  the 
Park."  Will,  of  course,  was  his  son.  In  the  succeeding 
year,  he  writes  to  Polly  that  he  embraces  most  gladly 
his  dear  friend's  proposal  of  a  subject  for  their  future 
correspondence,  though  he  fears  that  his  necessary 
business  and  journeys,  with  the  natural  indolence  of  an 
old  man,  will  make  him  too  unpunctual  a  correspondent. 

But  why  will  you  [he  asks],  by  the  Cultivation  of  your  Mind, 
make  yourself  still  more  amiable,  and  a  more  desirable  Com- 
panion for  a  Man  of  Understanding,  when  you  are  determin'd, 
as  I  hear,  to  live  single?  If  we  enter,  as  you  propose,  into 
moral  as  well  as  natural  Philosophy,  I  fancy,  when  I  have 
fully  establish'd  my  Authority  as  a  Tutor,  I  shall  take  upon 
me  to  lecture  you  a  little  on  that  Chapter  of  Duty. 

He  then  maps  out  a  course  of  reading  for  her,  to  be 
conducted  in  such  a  manner  as  to  furnish  them  with 
material  for  their  letters.  "Believe  me  ever,  my  dear 
good  Girl,"  he  concludes,  "your  affectionate  Friend  and 
Servant." 

With  his  next  letter,  he  sends  her  a  gift  of  books,  and 
begs  her  to  accept  it,  as  a  small  mark  of  his  esteem  and 
friendship,  and  the  gift  is  accompanied  with  more  specific 
advice  as  to  the  manner  in  which  she  was  to  prosecute  her 
studies,  and  obtain  the  benefit  of  his  knowledge  and 
counsel.  When  he  writes  again,  his  letter  discloses  the 
fact  that  a  brisk  interchange  of  ideas  had  been  actually 


376       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

established  between  them.  "Tis  a  very  sensible  Question 
you  ask, "  he  says,  "how  the  Air  can  affect  the  Barometer, 
when  its  Opening  appears  covered  with  Wood?"  And 
her  observation  on  what  she  had  lately  read  concerning 
insects  is  very  just  and  solid  too,  he  remarks.  The 
question  he  has  no  difficulty  in  answering,  and  the  ob- 
servation on  insects  leads  to  some  agreeable  statements 
about  the  silk- worm,  the  bee,  the  cochineal  and  the 
Spanish  fly,  and  finally  to  an  interesting  account  of  the 
way  in  which  the  great  Swedish  naturalist,  Linnaeus  had 
been  successfully  called  in  by  his  King  to  suggest  some 
means  of  checking  the  ravages  of  the  worm  that  was 
doing  such  injury  to  the  Swedish  ships.  Nor  was  all  this 
mellifluous  information  imparted  without  a  timely  caution. 

There  is,  however  [he  concluded],  a  prudent  Moderation 
to  be  used  in  Studies  of  this  kind.  The  Knowledge  of  Nature 
may  be  ornamental,  and  it  may  be  useful;  but  if,  to  attain  an 
Eminence  in  that,  we  neglect  the  Knowledge  and  Practice  of 
essential  Duties,  we  deserve  Reprehension.  For  there  is  no 
Rank  in  Natural  Knowledge  of  equal  Dignity  and  Importance 
with  that  of  being  a  good  Parent,  a  good  Child,  a  good  Hus- 
band or  Wife,  a  good  Neighbour  or  Friend,  a  good  Subject 
or  Citizen,  that  is,  in  short,  a  good  Christian.  Nicholas 
Gimcrack,  therefore,  who  neglected  the  Care  of  his  Family,  to 
Pursue  Butterflies,  was  a  just  Object  of  Ridicule,  and  we  must 
give  him  up  as  fair  Game  to  the  satyrist. 

A  later  letter  is  an  amusing  illustration  of  the  manner 
in  which  he  occasionally  reminded  his  pupil  that  she 
must  not  take  herself  and  Philosophy  too  seriously. 
Polly  was  at  the  time  at  the  famous  Wells  of  Bristol  about 
which  so  much  of  the  social  pageantry  of  the  eighteenth 
century  centred. 

Your  first  Question,  What  is  the  Reason  the  Water  at  this 
place,  tho'  cold  at  the  Springy  becomes  warm  by  Pumping?  it 
will  be  most  prudent  in  me  to  forbear  attempting  to  answer 


Franklin's  British  Friends  377 

[he  said],  till,  by  a  more  circumstantial  account,  you  assure 
me  of  the  Fact.  I  own  I  should  expect  that  Operation  to 
warm,  not  so  much  the  Water  pump'd,  as  the  Person  pumping. 
The  Rubbing  of  dry  Solids  together  has  been  long  observ'd 
to  produce  Heat;  but  the  like  Effect  has  never  yet,  that 
I  have  heard,  been  produc'd  by  the  mere  Agitation  of  Fluids, 
or  Friction  of  Fluids  with  Solids. 

He  might  have  let  the  matter  rest  there  but  he  did  not. 
The  occasion  was  too  opportune  a  one  to  impress  upon 
Polly  the  importance  of  not  jumping  at  conclusions  too 
quickly  for  him  to  refrain  from  borrowing  an  apt  story 
from  Selden  about  a  young  woman  who,  rinding  herself 
in  the  presence  of  some  gentlemen,  when  they  were  exam- 
ing  what  they  called  a  Chinese  shoe,  and  carrying  on  a 
dispute  about  it,  put  in  her  word,  and  said  modestly, 
"Gentlemen,  are  you  sure  it  is  a  Shoe?  Should  not  that 
be  settled  first?" 

Then  he  passes  to  a  highly  edifying  explanation  of  tidal 
movements  in  rivers,  so  simple  that  even  a  child,  to  say 
nothing  of  a  bright-witted  girl,  could  experience  no 
difficulty  in  understanding  it,  and  ends  with  the  question : 

After  writing  6  Folio  Pages  of  Philosophy  to  a  young  Girl, 
is  it  necessary  to  finish  such  a  Letter  with  a  Compliment? 
Is  not  such  a  Letter  of  itself  a  Compliment?  Does  it  not  say, 
she  has  a  Mind  thirsty  after  Knowledge,  and  capable  of 
receiving  it ;  and  that  the  most  agreeable  Things  one  can  write 
to  her  are  those  that  tend  to  the  Improvement  of  her  Under- 
standing? 

With  his  next  letter,  he  enclosed  a  paper  containing  his 
views  on  several  points  relating  to  the  air  and  the  evapora- 
tion of  water,  and  informed  Polly  that  he  would  shortly 
accompany  her  good  mother  again  to  Wanstead,  when  they 
could  take  a  walk  to  some  of  Lord  Tilney 's  ponds,  and  make 
a  few  experiments  there  that  would  explain  the  nature  of 
tides  more  fully. 


378       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

4 'Adieu,  my  dear  little  Philosopher,"  he  exclaims  in 
another  letter,  after  suggesting  that  thirsty  unfortunates 
at  sea  might  be  greatly  relieved  by  sitting  in  sea  water, 
and  declaring  that  wet  clothes  do  not  create  colds,  what- 
ever damp  may  do.  No  one  catches  cold  by  bathing, 
he  said,  and  no  clothes  can  be  wetter  than  water  itself. 

In  another  letter,  he  makes  some  most  readable  observa- 
tions upon  the  evaporation  of  rivers  and  the  relations  of 
colors  to  heat.  The  ignorant,  he  declared,  suppose  in  some 
cases  that  a  river  loses  itself  by  running  underground, 
whereas  in  truth  it  has  run  up  into  the  air.  And,  with 
reference  to  the  interdependence  of  heat  and  color,  he 
pursued  this  fresh  train  of  ideas : 


What  signifies  Philosophy  that  does  not  apply  to  some  Use? 
May  we  not  learn  from  hence,  that  black  Clothes  are  not  so 
fit  to  wear  in  a  hot  Sunny  Climate  or  Season,  as  white  ones; 
because  in  such  Cloaths  the  Body  is  more  heated  by  the  Sun 
when  we  walk  abroad,  and  are  at  the  same  time  heated  by  the 
Exercise,  which  double  Heat  is  apt  to  bring  on  putrid  dangerous 
Fevers?  That  Soldiers  and  Seamen,  who  must  march  and 
labour  in  the  Sun,  should,  in  the  East  or  West  Indies  have  an 
Uniform  of  white?  That  Summer  Hats,  for  Men  or  Women, 
should  be  white,  as  repelling  that  Heat  which  gives  Headaches 
to  many,  and  to  some  the  fatal  Stroke  that  the  French  call  the 
Coup  de  Soleil?  That  the  Ladies'  Summer  Hats,  however, 
should  be  lined  with  Black,  as  not  reverberating  on  their 
Faces  those  Rays  which  are  reflected  upwards  from  the  Earth 
or  Water?  That  the  putting  a  white  Cap  of  Paper  or  Linnen 
within  the  Crown  of  a  black  Hat,  as  some  do,  will  not  keep 
out  the  Heat,  tho'  it  would  if  placed  without?  That  Fruit- 
Walls  being  black'd  may  receive  so  much  Heat  from  the 
Sun  in  the  Daytime,  as  to  continue  warm  in  some  degree 
thro'  the  Night,  and  thereby  preserve  the  Fruit  from  Frosts, 
or  forward  its  Growth? — with  sundry  other  particulars  of 
less  or  greater  Importance,  that  will  occur  from  time  to  time 
to  attentive  Minds? 


Franklin's  British  Friends  379 

Sometimes  he  exchanges  language  like  this  for  such 
bantering  questions  as  these:  "Have  you  finish'd  your 
Course  of  Philosophy?  No  more  Doubts  to  be  resolv'd? 
No  more  Questions  to  ask?  If  so,  you  may  now  be  at 
full  Leisure  to  improve  yourself  in  Cards." 

Another  letter,  dated  June  7,  1762,  was  written  in 
contemplation  of  the  fact  that  he  was  about  to  leave 
the  Old  World  for  the  New. 

I  fancy  I  feel  a  little  like  dying  Saints  [he  said],  who,  in 
parting  with  those  they  love  in  this  World,  are  only  comforted 
with  the  Hope  of  more  perfect  Happiness  in  the  next.  I  have, 
in  America,  Connections  of  the  most  engaging  kind;  and, 
happy  as  I  have  been  in  the  Friendships  here  contracted,  those 
promise  me  greater  and  more  lasting  Felicity.  But  God  only 
knows  whether  these  Promises  shall  be  fulfilled. 

Then  came  the  letter  written  to  her  from  a  "wretched 
inn"  at  Portsmouth  when  he  was  on  the  point  of  embark- 
ing for  America.  It  is  none  the  less  noteworthy  because 
it  reveals  the  fact  that  the  thought  of  a  marriage  between 
Polly  and  his  son  had  been  a  familiar  one  to  him  and  her. 

It  (the  paper  on  which  he  wrote)  [he  said]  will  tell  my 
Polly  how  much  her  Friend  is  afflicted,  that  he  must,  perhaps, 
never  again,  see  one  for  whom  he  has  so  sincere  an  Affection, 
join'd  to  so  perfect  an  Esteem;  who  he  once  flatter'd  himself 
might  become  his  own,  in  the  tender  Relation  of  a  Child,  but 
can  now  entertain  such  pleasing  Hopes  no  more.  Will  it  tell 
how  much  he  is  afflicted?     No,  it  can  not. 

Adieu,  my  dearest  Child.  I  will  call  you  so.  Why  should  I 
not  call  you  so,  since  I  love  you  with  all  the  Tenderness,  All  the 
Fondness  of  a  Father?  Adieu.  May  the  God  of  all  Good- 
ness shower  down  his  choicest  Blessings  upon  you,  and  make 
you  infinitely  Happier,  than  that  Event  could  have  made  you. 

No  wonder  that  the  fatherless  girl  should  have  felt  from 
the  day  that  she  received  this  letter  until  the  day  that  she 
helped  to  assuage  the  pain  of  Franklin's  last  hours  by  her 


380       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

loving  ministrations  that  the  heart  in  which  she  was  so 
deeply  cherished  was  one  of  these  blessings.  A  few 
months  later,  Franklin  writes  to  her  from  America  a  long, 
communicative  letter,  valuable  among  other  reasons 
for  the  evidence  that  it  affords  of  the  ready  sympathy 
with  which  he  had  entered  into  her  circle  of  youthful 
friendships.  He  tells  her  that  he  shares  her  grief  over  her 
separation  from  her  old  friend  Miss  Pitt;  "Pitty,"  he 
calls  her  in  another  place  in  this  letter  when  he  sends 
his  love  to  her.  He  congratulates  her  upon  the  recovery 
of  her  "dear  Dolly's"  health.  This  was  Dorothea  Blount 
to  whom  he  repeatedly  refers  in  his  letters  to  her.  "I 
love  that  dear  good  Girl  myself,  and  I  love  her  other 
Friends,"  he  said.  Polly's  statement  in  the  letter,  to 
which  his  letter  was  a  reply,  that  she  had  lately  had  the 
pleasure  of  spending  three  days  with  Doctor  and  Mrs. 
Hawkesworth  at  the  house  of  John  Stanley,  all  warm 
friends  of  his,  elicits  from  him  the  exclamation,  "It  was 
a  sweet  Society!" 

These  are  but  a  few  of  the  many  details  that  make  up 
this  letter.  Polly  was  one  of  the  stimulating  correspon- 
dents who  brought  out  all  that  was  best  in  Franklin's 
own  intellectual  resources,  and  the  next  time  that  he 
wrote  to  her  from  America  he  used  this  appreciative 
and  grateful  language.  "The  Ease,  the  Smoothness,  the 
Purity  of  Diction,  and  Delicacy  of  Sentiment,  that  always 
appear  in  your  Letters,  never  fail  to  delight  me;  but  the 
tender  filial  Regard  you  constantly  express  for  your  old 
Friend  is  particularly  engaging." 

In  later  letters  to  Polly,  written  after  his  return  to  Eng- 
land in  1764,  there  are  other  lively  passages  like  those  that 
animated  his  letters  to  her  before  his  return  to  America. 
On  one  occasion  he  answers  a  letter  from  her  in  verse. 

A  Muse,  you  must  know,  visited  me  this  Morning!  I 
see  you  are  surpriz'd,  as  I  was.    I  never  saw  one  before.    And 


Franklin's  British  Friends  381 

shall  never  see  another.  So  I  took  the  Opportunity  of  her 
Help  to  put  the  Answer  into  Verse,  because  I  was  some  Verse 
in  your  Debt  ever  since  you  sent  me  the  last  Pair  of  Garters. 

This  letter  is  succeeded  by  a  highly  vivacious  one 
from  Paris  where  he  enjoyed  the  honor  of  conversing 
with  the  King  and  Queen  while  they  sat  at  meat.  The 
latter  letter  is  so  full  of  sparkling  fun  that  we  cannot  but 
regret  that  Franklin  did  not  leave  behind  him  equally 
detailed  narratives  of  his  travels  in  Germany  and  Holland, 
and  over  the  face  of  Great  Britain.  All  the  way  to  Dover, 
he  said,  he  was  engaged  in  perpetual  disputes  with  inn- 
keepers, hostlers  and  postilions  because  he  was  prevented 
from  seeing  the  country  by  the  forward  tilt  of  the  hoods 
of  the  post-chaises  in  wrhich  he  was  driven;  "they  insisting 
that  the  Chaise  leaning  forward  was  an  Ease  to  the 
Horses,  and  that  the  contrary  would  kill  them."  "I 
suppose  the  chaise  leaning  forward,"  he  surmised,  "looks 
to  them  like  a  Willingness  to  go  forward,  and  that  its 
hanging  back  shows  a  Reluctance."  He  concludes  a 
humorous  description  of  the  seasickness  of  a  number  of 
green  passengers  betwreen  Dover  and  Calais,  who  made  a 
hearty  breakfast  in  the  morning,  before  embarking,  for 
fear  that,  if  the  wind  should  fail,  they  might  not  get  over 
till  supper  time,  with  the  remark,  "So  it  seems  there  are 
Uncertainties,  even  beyond  those  between  the  Cup  and 
the  Lip."  Impositions  suffered  by  Franklin  on  the 
journey,  the  smooth  highways  of  France,  the  contrast 
between  the  natural  brunettes  of  Calais  and  Boulogne 
and  the  natural  blondes  of  Abbeville,  the  Parisian  com- 
plexions to  wThich  nature  in  every  form  was  a  total  stranger, 
the  Grand  Convert  where  the  Royal  Family  supped  in 
public,  the  magnificence  of  Versailles  and  Paris,  to  which 
nothing  was  wanting  but  cleanliness  and  tidiness,  the 
pure  water  and  fine  streets  of  Paris,  French  politeness,  the 
paintings,  the  plays  and  operas  of  the  gayest  capital  in 


382       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

the  world  all  furnished  topics  for  this  delightful  letter, 
composed  in  the  high  spirits  born  of  rapid  movement  from 
one  novel  experience  to  another,  and  doubtless  endued, 
when  read,  with  the  never  failing  charm  that  belongs  to 
foreign  scenes,  scanned  by  the  eyes  of  those  we  love. 
Franklin  did  not  know  which  were  the  most  rapacious, 
the  English  or  the  French  boatmen  or  porters,  but  the 
latter  had  with  their  knavery,  he  thought,  the  most 
politeness.  The  only  drawback  about  the  roads  in  France, 
paved  with  smooth  stone-like  streets  for  many  miles 
together,  and  flanked  on  each  side  with  trees,  was  the 
labor  which  the  peasants  complained  that  they  had  to 
expend  upon  them  for  full  two  months  in  the  year  with- 
out pay.  Whether  this  was  truth,  or  whether,  like  English- 
men, they  grumbled,  cause  or  no  cause,  Franklin  had  not 
yet  been  able  to  fully  inform  himself. 

Passing  over  his  speculations  as  to  the  origin  of  the  fair 
complexions  of  the  women  of  Abbeville,  where  wheels  and 
looms  were  going  in  every  house,  we  stop  for  a  moment 
to  reproduce  this  unsparing  description  of  the  manner 
in  which  the  women  of  Paris  exercised  the  art  which  has 
never  been  known  to  excite  any  form  of  approval  except 
feminine  self-approval. 

As  to  Rouge,  they  don't  pretend  to  imitate  Nature  in  laying 
it  on.  There  is  no  gradual  Diminution  of  the  Colour,  from 
the  full  Bloom  in  the  Middle  of  the  Cheek  to  the  faint  Tint 
near  the  Sides,  nor  does  it  show  itself  differently  in  different 
Faces.  I  have  not  had  the  Honour  of  being  at  any  Lady's 
Toylette  to  see  how  it  is  laid  on,  but  I  fancy  I  can  tell  you 
how  it  is  or  may  be  done.  Cut  a  hole  of  3  Inches  Diameter 
in  a  Piece  of  Paper;  place  it  on  the  Side  of  your  Face  in  such  a 
Manner  as  that  the  Top  of  the  Hole  may  be  just  under  your 
Eye;  then  with  a  Brush  dipt  in  the  Colour,  paint  Face  and 
Paper  together;  so  when  the  Paper  is  taken  off  there  will  remain 
a  round  Patch  of  Red  exactly  the  Form  of  the  Hole.  This  is 
the  Mode,  from  the  Actresses  on  the  Stage  upwards  thro'  all 


Franklin's  British  Friends  383 

Ranks  of  Ladies  to  the  Princesses  of  the  Blood,  but  it  stops 
there,  the  Queen  not  using  it,  having  in  the  Serenity,  Com- 
placence, and  Benignity  that  shine  so  eminently  in,  or  rather 
through  her  Countenance,  sufficient  Beauty,  tho*  now  an  old 
Woman,  to  do  extreamly  well  without  it. 

In  picturing  the  royal  supper,  with  its  gold  service  and 
its  A  boire  pour  le  Roy  and  its  A  boire  pour  la  Reine,  Frank- 
lin even  draws  a  sketch  of  the  table  so  that  Polly  can  see 
just  where  the  King  and  Queen  and  Mesdames  Adelaide, 
Victoria,  Louise  and  Sophie  sat,  and  just  where  Sir  John 
Pringle  and  himself  stood,  when  they  were  brought  by  an 
officer  of  the  court  to  be  talked  to  by  the  royal  personages. 
This  letter  also  contains  what  is  perhaps  the  handsomest 
compliment  ever  paid  to  French  politeness :  ! '  It  seems  to 
be  a  Point  settled  here  universally,  that  Strangers  are 
to  be  treated  with  Respect;  and  one  has  just  the  same 
Deference  shewn  one  here  by  being  a  Stranger,  as  in 
England  by  being  a  Lady."     • 

The  grave  statement  in  this  letter  that  travelling  is  one 
way  of  lengthening  life,  at  least  in  appearance,  is  made  the 
starting-point  for  the  laughing  statement  that  the  writer 
himself  had  perhaps  suffered  a  greater  change  in  his  own 
person  than  he  could  have  done  in  six  years  at  home. 

I  had  not  been  here  Six  Days  [he  declared]  before  my 
Taylor  and  Perruquier  had  transform'd  me  into  a  Frenchman. 
Only  think  what  a  Figure  I  make  in  a  little  Bag- Wig  and  naked 
Ears!  They  told  me  I  was  become  20  Years  younger,  and 
look'd  very  galante;  So  being  in  Paris  where  the  Mode  is  to  be 
sacredly  follow' d  I  was  once  very  near  making  Love  to  my 
Friend's  Wife. 

The  next  words  in  the  letter  are  also  full  of  effervescing 
gaiety:  "This  Letter  shall  cost  you  a  Shilling,  and  you 
may  consider  it  cheap,  when  you  reflect,  that  it  has  cost 
me  at  least  50  Guineas  to  get  into  the  Situation,  that 
enables  me  to  write  it.     Besides,  I  might,  if  I  had  staied 


384       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

at  home,  have  won  perhaps  two  Shillings  of  you  at  Crib- 
bidge." 

Among  the  best  of  his  subsequent  letters  is  the  one — 
instinct  with  his  usual  wisdom  and  good  feeling — in  which 
he  advises  Polly  to  return  to  her  aunt,  Mrs.  Tickell,  as 
soon  as  a  temporary  separation  was  at  an  end,  and  con- 
tinue by  every  means  in  her  power,  no  matter  how  sorely 
tried  by  her  aunt's  infirmities,  to  make  the  remainder 
of  the  latter's  days  as  comfortable  as  possible.  Polly 
adopted  the  advice  of  this  letter,  and  reaped  her  reward 
not  only  in  the  gratified  sense  of  duty,  upon  which  the 
letter  laid  such  emphasis,  but  also  in  the  fortune  which 
she  received  upon  the  death  of  Mrs.  Tickell. 

In  1770,  she  was  married  to  Dr.  William  Hewson,  a 
brilliant  physician,  who  was  prematurely  cut  off  by 
surgical  infection,  leaving  her  the  mother  of  three  young 
children.  It  was  probably  of  him  that  she  wrote  to 
Franklin  from  Margate  in  the  year  preceding  her  marriage 
with  him  that  she  had  met  with  a  very  sensible  physician 
the  day  before  and  would  not  have  Franklin  or  her  mother 
surprised  if  she  should  run  off  with  this  young  man.  To 
be  sure,  this  would  be  an  imprudent  step  at  the  discreet 
age  of  thirty ;  but  there  was  no  saying  what  one  should  do, 
if  solicited  by  a  man  of  an  insinuating  address  and  good 
person,  though  he  might  be  too  young  for  one,  and  not 
yet  established  in  his  profession.  The  letter  began  with  a 
welcome  to  Franklin,  who  had  just  returned  from  the 
Continent,  and  he  was  quick  to  respond  with  a  pleasantry 
to  her  communication  about  the  young  physician. 

There  are  certain  circumstances  in  Life,  sometimes  [he 
said],  wherein  'tis  perhaps  best  not  to  hearken  to  Reason. 
For  instance;  possibly,  if  the  Truth  were  known,  I  have 
Reason  to  be  jealous  of  this  same  insinuating,  handsome 
young  Physician;  but  as  it  flatters  more  my  Vanity,  and 
therefore  gives  me  more  Pleasure,  to  suppose  you  were  in 
Spirits  on  ace*  of  my  safe  Return,  I  shall  turn  a  deaf  Ear  to 


Franklin's  British  Friends  385 

Reason  in  this  Case,  as  I  have  done  with  Success  in  twenty 
others. 

In  a  subsequent  letter,  Franklin  tells  Polly  that  her 
mother  has  been  complaining  of  her  head  more  than 
ever  before. 

If  she  stoops,  or  looks,  or  bends  her  Neck  downwards,  on 
any  occasion,  it  is  with  great  Pain  and  Difficulty,  that  sne 
gets  her  Head  up  again.  She  has,  therefore,  borrowed  a 
Breast  and  Neck  Collar  of  Mrs.  Wilkes,  such  as  Misses  wear, 
and  now  uses  it  to  keep  her  Head  up.  Mr.  Strahan  has 
invited  us  all  to  dine  there  to-morrow,  but  she  has  excused 
herself.  Will  you  come,  and  go  with  me?  If  you  cannot 
well  do  that,  you  will  at  least  be  with  us  on  Friday  to  go  to 
Lady  Strachans. 

His  own  head,  he  says,  is  better,  owing,  he  is  fully  per- 
suaded, to  his  extreme  abstemiousness  for  some  days 
past  at  home,  but  he  is  not  without  apprehensions  that, 
being  to  dine  abroad  that  day,  the  next  day,  and  the 
day  after,  he  may  inadvertently  bring  it  on  again,  if  he 
does  not  think  of  his  little  monitor  and  guardian  angel, 
and  make  use  of  the  proper  and  very  pertinent  clause  she 
proposes  in  his  grace.  This  clause  was  doubtless  suggested 
by  his  previous  letter  about  the  insinuating,  handsome 
physician  in  which  he  had  written  to  his  little  monitor 
that  he  had  just  come  home  from  a  venison  feast,  where  he 
had  drunk  more  than  a  philosopher  ought.  His  next 
letter  warily  refrains  from  giving  his  flat  approval  to 
Dr.  Hewson's  proposal.  His  attitude  towards  Mrs. 
Greene's  marriage  had  been  equally  cautious.  He  was 
probably  of  the  opinion  that,  along  with  the  other  good 
advice,  that  finds  its  way  to  the  moon,  is  not  a  little  relat- 
ing to  nuptial  engagements.  The  whole  letter  is  stamped 
with  the  good  sense  and  wholesome  feeling  which  such 
situations  never  failed  to  evoke  from  him. 

VOL.  I— 2S 


386       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

I  assure  you  [he  said]  that  no  Objection  has  occurred  to  me. 
His  Person  you  see;  his  Temper  and  his  Understanding  you  can 
judge  of;  his  Character,  for  anything  I  have  ever  heard,  is 
unblemished;  his  Profession,  with  the  Skill  in  it  he  is  suppos'd 
to  have,  will  be  sufficient  to  support  a  Family,  and,  therefore, 
considering  the  Fortune  you  have  in  your  Hands  (tho'  any 
future  Expectation  from  your  Aunt  should  be  disappointed) 
I  do  not  see  but  that  the  Agreement  may  be  a  rational  one  on 
both  sides. 

I  see  your  Delicacy,  and  your  Humility  too;  for  you  fancy 
that  if  you  do  not  prove  a  great  Fortune,  you  will  not  be 
lov'd;  but  I  am  sure  that  were  I  in  his  situation  in  every 
respect,  knowing  you  so  well  as  I  do,  and  esteeming  you  so 
highly,  I  should  think  you  a  Fortune  sufficient  for  me  without 
a  Shilling. 

Having  thus  expressed  his  concern,  equal  to  any  father's, 
he  said,  for  her  happiness,  and  dispelled  the  idea  on  her 
part  that  he  did  not  favor  the  proposal,  because  he  did 
not  immediately  advise  its  acceptance,  he  left,  he  con- 
cluded, the  rest  to  her  sound  judgment,  of  which  no  one 
had  a  greater  share,  and  would  not  be  too  inquisitive  as  to 
her  particular  reasons,  doubts  and  fears. 

They  were  married  only  to  share  the  bright  vision  of 
unclouded  married  happiness  for  some  four  years,  and 
then  to  be  separated  by  that  tragic  agency  which  few  but 
Franklin  have  ever  been  able  to  invest  with  the  peaceful 
radiance  of  declining  day.  A  letter  from  Franklin  to 
Mrs.  Hewson,  written  shortly  after  the  marriage,  laughs 
as  it  were  through  its  tears  over  the  mournful  plight  in 
which  Dolly  and  he  have  been  left  by  her  desertion,  but 
it  shows  that  he  is  beginning  to  get  into  touch  with  all  the 
changes  brought  about  by  the  new  connection.  We  have 
already  seen  how  fully  his  heart  went  out  to  his  godson 
who  sprang  from  the  union.  He  has  a  word  to  say  about 
him  in  another  letter  to  Mrs.  Hewson  after  a  jest  at  the 
expense  of  Mrs.  Stevenson's  Jacobite  prejudices. 


Franklin's  British  Friends  387 

»  I  thank  you  [he  said]  for  your  intelligence  about  my  God- 
son. I  believe  you  are  sincere,  when  you  say  you  think  him 
as  fine  a  Child  as  you  wish  to  see.  He  had  cut  two  Teeth, 
and  three,  in  another  Letter,  make  five ;  for  I  know  you  never 
write  Tautologies.  If  I  have  over-reckoned,  the  Number 
will  be  right  by  this  Time.  His  being  like  me  in  so  many 
Particulars  pleases  me  prodigiously;  and  I  am  persuaded  there 
is  another,  which  you  have  omitted,  tho'  it  must  have  occurr'd 
to  you  while  you  were  putting  them  down.  Pray  let  him 
have  everything  he  likes;  I  think  it  of  great  Consequence  while 
the  Features  of  the  Countenance  are  forming;  it  gives  them  a 
pleasant  Air,  and,  that  being  once  become  natural  and  fix'd 
by  Habit,  the  Face  is  ever  after  the  handsomer  for  it,  and 
on  that  much  of  a  Person's  good  Fortune  and  Success  in  Life 
may  depend.  Had  I  been  cross'd  as  much  in  my  Infant 
Likings  and  Inclinations  as  you  know  I  have  been  of  late 
Years,  I  should  have  been,  I  was  going  to  say,  not  near  so 
handsome;  but  as  the  Vanity  of  that  Expression  would  offend 
other  Folk's  Vanity,  I  change  it  out  of  regard  to  them,  and 
say,  a  great  deal  more  homely. 

His  next  letter  is  written  to  Mrs.  Hewson,  then  a 
widow,  from  Philadelphia,  after  his  return  from  his 
second  mission  to  England,  and  tells  her  that  the  times 
are  not  propitious  for  the  emigration  to  America,  which  she 
was  contemplating,  but  expresses  the  hope  that  they  might 
all  be  happy  together  in  Philadelphia  a  little  later  on. 

When  he  next  writes,  it  is  from  Paris  on  January  12, 
1777.  "My  Dear,  Dear  Polly,"  he  begins,  "Figure  to 
yourself  an  old  Man,  with  grey  Hair  Appearing  under 
a  Martin  Fur  Cap,  among  the  Powder'd  Heads  of  Paris. 
It  is  this  odd  Figure  that  salutes  you,  with  handfuls  of 
Blessings  on  you  and  your  dear  little  ones."  He  had 
failed  to  bring  about  a  union  between  Polly  and  his  son, 
but,  inveterate  matchmaker  that  he  was,  this  letter 
shows  that  he  still  had,  as  a  grandfather,  the  designs 
on  Eliza,  Polly's  daughter,  that  he  had  disclosed  in  his 
previous  letter  to  Polly,  when  he  expressed  the  hope 


388       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

that  he  might  be  alive  to  dance  with  Mrs.  Stevenson  at  the 
wedding  of  Ben  and  this  child.  "I  give  him  (Ben),"  it 
said,  with  a  French  grimace  between  its  lines,  "a  little 
French  Language  and  Address,  and  then  send  him  over 
to  pay  his  Respects  to  Miss  Hewson."  In  another  letter, 
he  tells  Polly  that,  if  she  would  take  Ben  under  her  care, 
as  she  had  offered  to  do,  he  would  set  no  bad  example  to 
her  other  children.  Two  or  three  years  later,  he  wrote 
to  her  from  Philadelphia  that  Ben  was  finishing  his  studies 
at  college,  and  would,  he  thought,  make  her  a  good  son. 
Indeed  a  few  days  later  he  referred  to  Ben  in  another  letter 
as  "your  son  Ben." 

"  Does  my  Godson,"  he  asked  in  a  letter  from  France  to 
Mrs.  Hewson,  along  with  many  affectionate  inquiries 
about  his  "dear  old  Friend,"  Mrs.  Stevenson,  and  other 
English  friends  of  theirs,  "remember  anything  of  his 
Doctor  Papa?  I  suppose  not.  Kiss  the  dear  little 
Fellow  for  me;  not  forgetting  the  others.  I  long  to  see 
them  and  you.M  Then  in  a  postscript  he  tells  Mrs. 
Hewson  that,  at  the  ball  in  Nantes,  Temple  took  notice 
that  there  were  no  heads  less  than  five,  and  that  there 
were  a  few  seven  lengths  of  the  face  above  the  forehead. 
"You  know,"  he  observes  with  the  old  sportive  humor, 
"that  those  who  have  practis'd  Drawing,  as  he  has, 
attend  more  to  Proportions,  than  People  in  common 
do."  In  another  letter  from  Passy,  he  asks  Mrs.  Hewson 
whether  Jacob  Viny,  who  was  in  the  wheel  business, 
could  not  make  up  a  coach  with  the  latest  useful  improve- 
ments and  bring  them  all  over  in  it.  In  the  same  letter, 
he  inserts  a  word  to  relieve  Mrs.  Stevenson  of  her  anxiety 
about  her  swelled  ankles  which  she  attributed  to  the 
dropsy;  and  the  paragraph  ends  with  the  words,  "My 
tender  Love  to  her." 

As  Polly's  children  grew  older,  the  references  to  them  in 
Franklin's  letters  to  the  mother  became  more  and  more 
frequent  and  affectionate. 


Franklin's  British  Friends  389 

You  cannot  be  more  pleas'd  [he  wrote  to  her  from  Passy], 
in  talking  about  your  Children,  your  Methods  of  Instructing 
them,  and  the  Progress  they  make,  than  I  am  in  hearing  it, 
and  in  finding,  that,  instead  of  following  the  idle  Amusements, 
which  both  your  Fortune  and  the  Custom  of  the  Age  might 
have  led  you  into,  your  Delight  and  your  Duty  go  together, 
by  employing  your  Time  in  the  Education  of  your  Offspring. 
This  is  following  Nature  and  Reason,  instead  of  Fashion; 
than  which  nothing  is  more  becoming  the  Character  of  a 
Woman  of  Sense  and  Virtue. 

Repeatedly  Franklin  sends  little  books  to  Mrs.  Hewson's 
children,  and  on  one  occasion  he  sends  two  different 
French  grammars,  one  of  which,  after  the  French  master 
of  her  children  had  taken  his  choice,  was  to  be  given  to  his 
godson,  as  his  New  Year's  gift,  together  with  the  two 
volumes  of  Synonymes  Frangaises.  At  one  time  before 
he  left  France,  he  thought  of  visiting  Mrs.  Hewson  in 
England  and  asked  her  advice  about  doing  so  in  the 
existing  state  of  the  British  temper.  When  she  counselled 
him  against  the  journey,  he  wrote  to  her,  "Come,  my 
dear  Friend,  live  with  me  while  I  stay  here,  and  go  with 
me,  if  I  do  go.,  to  America.' '  As  the  result  of  this  invita- 
tion, Mrs.  Hewson  and  her  children  spent  the  winter  of 
1784-85  with  him  at  Passy,  and  his  first  letter  to  her, 
after  she  returned  to  England,  bears  indications  in  every 
line  of  the  regret  inspired  by  his  loss  of  her  society,  after, 
to  use  his  own  words,  he  had  passed  a  long  winter  in  a 
manner  that  made  it  appear  the  shortest  of  any  he  ever 
spent.  One  of  his  peculiarities  was  to  make  a  point  of 
telling  a  friend  anything  of  a  pleasant  nature  that  he  had 
heard  about  him.  Since  her  departure,  M.  LeVeillard  in 
particular,  he  said,  had  told  him  at  different  times  what 
indeed  he  knew  long  since,  "Cest  une  bien  digne  Femme, 
cette  Madame  Hewson,  une  trfc  amable  Femme"  The 
letter  then  terminates  with  the  request  that,  when  she 
prayed  at  church  for  all  that  travelled  by  land  or  sea,  she 


39°       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

would  think  of  her  ever  affectionate  friend,  but  starts  up 
again  in  a  postscript,  in  which  he  sends  his  love  to  Wil- 
liam, Thomas  and  Eliza,  Mrs.  Hewson's  children,  and 
asks  their  mother  to  tell  them  that  he  missed  their 
cheerful  prattle.  Temple  being  sick,  and  Benjamin  at 
Paris,  he  had  found  it  very  triste  breakfasting  alone,  and 
sitting  alone,  and  without  any  tea  in  the  evening.  "My 
love  to  every  one  of  the  Children,"  is  his  postscript  to 
his  next  letter,  in  which,  when  he  was  on  the  eve  of  leaving 
France,  he  told  Mrs.  Hewson  that  he  said  nothing  to 
persuade  her  to  go  with  him  or  to  follow  him,  because  he 
knew  that  she  did  not  usually  act  from  persuasion,  but 
judgment.  In  nothing  was  he  wiser  than  in  his  reserve 
about  giving  advice  when  the  persons  to  be  advised  were 
themselves  in  possession  of  all  the  facts  of  the  case  essen- 
tial to  a  proper  decision.  When  he  touched  at  South- 
ampton, Mrs.  Hewson  was  not  yet  resolved  to  sever  the 
ties  that  connected  her  with  England,  but  subsequently 
she  did  come  over  with  her  children  to  Philadelphia,  and 
made  it  her  home  for  the  rest  of  her  life.  The  last  letter 
but  one  that  Franklin  wrote  to  her  before  she  sailed  is 
among  the  most  readable  letters  in  the  correspondence. 
Referring  to  three  letters  of  hers,  that  had  not  reached 
him  until  nearly  ten  years  after  they  were  written,  he 
said: 

This  pacquet  had  been  received  by  Mr.  Bache,  after  my 
departure  for  France,  lay  dormant  among  his  papers  during 
all  my  absence,  and  has  just  now  broke  out  upon  me,  like 
words,  that  had  been,  as  somebody  says,  congealed  in  northern 
air.  Therein  I  find  all  the  pleasing  little  family  history  of 
your  children;  how  William  had  begun  to  spell,  overcoming, 
by  strength  of  memory,  all  the  difficulty  occasioned  by  the 
common  wretched  alphabet,  while  you  were  convinced  of  the 
utility  of  our  new  one;  how  Tom,  genius-like,  struck  out  new 
paths,  and,  relinquishing  the  old  names  of  the  letters,  called 
U  bell  and  P  bottle;  how  Eliza  began  to  grow  jolly,  that  is, 


Franklin's  British  Friends  391 

fat  and  handsome,  resembling  Aunt  Rooke,  whom  I  used  to 
call  my  lovely.  Together  with  all  the  then  news  of  Lady 
Blount's  having  produced  at  length  a  boy;  of  Dolly's  being 
well,  and  of  poor  good  Catherine's  decease;  of  your  affairs 
with  Muir  and  Atkinson,  and  of  their  contract  for  feeding 
the  fish  in  the  channel;  of  the  Vinys  and  their  jaunt  to  Cam- 
bridge in  the  long  carriage ;  of  Dolly's  journey  to  Wales  with 
Mrs.  Scott;  of  the  Wilkeses,  the  Pearces,  Eiphinstones,  &c; 
— concluding  with  a  kind  of  promise,  that,  as  soon  as  the  minis- 
try and  Congress  agreed  to  make  peace,  I  should  have  you 
with  me  in  America.  That  peace  has  been  some  time  made; 
but,  alas!  the  promise  is  not  yet  fulfilled. 

Rarely,  indeed,  we  imagine  has  one  person,  even  though 
a  father,  or  a  husband,  ever  enveloped  the  life  of  another 
with  such  an  atmosphere  of  pure,  caressing,  intimate 
sympathy  and  affection  as  surrounds  these  letters.  Per- 
haps, our  review  of  them  would  be  incomplete,  if  wre  did 
not  also  recall  the  comments  made  by  Franklin  to  Polly 
upon  the  death  of  her  mother,  and  Polly's  own  comments 
upon  the  close  of  his  life. 

The  Departure  of  my  dearest  Friend  [he  wrote  to  Polly 
from  Passy],  which  I  learn  from  your  last  Letter,  greatly 
affects  me.  To  meet  with  her  once  more  in  this  Life  was  one 
of  the  principal  Motives  of  my  proposing  to  visit  England  again, 
before  my  Return  to  America.  The  last  Year  carried  off  my 
Friends  Dr.  Pringle,  and  Dr.  Fothergill,  Lord  Kaims,  and 
Lord  le  Despencer.  This  has  begun  to  take  away  the  rest,  and 
strikes  the  hardest.  Thus  the  Ties  I  had  to  that  Country, 
and  indeed  to  the  World  in  general,  are  loosened  one  by  one, 
and  I  shall  soon  have  no  Attachment  left  to  make  me  unwilling 
to  follow. 

This  is  the  description  given  by  Mrs.  Hewson  of  his 
last  years  after  stating  that  during  the  two  years  that 
preceded  his  death  he  did  not  experience  so  much  as  two 
months  of  exemption  from  pain,  yet  never  uttered  one 
repining  or  peevish  word. 


392       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

When  the  pain  was  not  too  violent  to  be  amused,  he  em- 
ployed himself  with  his  books,  his  pen,  or  in  conversation 
with  his  friends;  and  upon  every  occasion  displayed  the 
clearness  of  his  intellect,  and  the  cheerfulness  of  his  temper. 
Even  when  the  intervals  from  pain  were  so  short,  that  his 
words  were  frequently  interrupted,  I  have  known  him  to 
hold  a  discourse  in  a  sublime  strain  of  piety.  I  never  shall 
forget  one  day  that  I  passed  with  our  friend  last  summer 
(1789).  I  found  him  in  bed  in  great  agony;  but,  when  that 
agony  abated  a  little,  I  asked  him  if  I  should  read  to  him. 
He  said,  "Yes,"  and  the  first  book  I  met  with  was  "Johnson's 
Lives  of  the  Poets."  I  read  the  "  Life  of  Watts,"  who  was  a 
favorite  author  with  Dr.  Franklin;  and  instead  of  lulling 
him  to  sleep,  it  roused  him  to  a  display  of  the  powers  of  his 
memory  and  his  reason.  He  repeated  several  of  Watts's 
"Lyric  Poems,"  and  descanted  upon  their  sublimity  in  a 
strain  worthy  of  them  and  of  their  pious  author. 

Sublime  or  not,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the  poems  of 
Dr.  Watts  have  been  a  staff  of  comfort  and  support  to 
many  a  pilgrim  on  his  way  to  the  "fields  of  endless  light 
where  the  saints  and  angels  walk." 

Another  very  dear  English  friend  of  Franklin  was 
William  Strahan,  King's  Printer,  the  partner  at  one  time 
of  Thomas  Cadell  the  Elder,  and  the  publisher  of  Gibbon's 
Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  The  frequent 
references  in  Frankin's  letters  to  him  to  Madeira  wine 
would  seem  to  indicate  that,  if  it  had  been  possible  for 
such  a  temperate  man  as  Franklin  to  have  what  is  known 
as  a  boon  companion,  Strahan  would  have  been  he. 
On  one  occasion,  Franklin  writes  to  him  that  he  has  a 
great  opinion  of  his  wisdom  (Madeira  apart),  on  another, 
after  twitting  him  good-humoredly  with  the  restless 
condition  of  England,  he  observes:  "You  will  say  my 
Advice  'smells  of  Madeira'  You  are  right.  This  foolish 
Letter  is  mere  chitchat  between  ourselves  over  the  second 
bottle." 


Franklin's  British  Friends  393 

The  friendship  between  the  two  began  before  they  had 
even  seen  each  other.  From  writing  to  each  other  from 
time  to  time,  in  the  course  of  business,  about  books  and 
stationery,  they  finally  came  to  feel  as  if  they  really  knew 
each  other,  and  to  exchange  familiar  messages  on  that 
footing.  In  his  earliest  letter  to  Strahan,  Franklin  signs 
himself,  "Your  humble  servant  unknown, "  but,  before  he 
has  even  carried  into  execution  the  floating  intention  of 
going  over  to  England,  which,  again  and  again,  manifests 
itself  in  his  letters  to  Strahan,  his  spouse  is  corresponding 
with  Mrs.  Strahan,  and  he  has  arranged  a  match  between 
Sally  and  Master  Billy,  one  of  Strahan's  sons.  "My 
compliments  to  Mrs.  Strahan,  and  to  your  promising  son, 
perhaps  one  day  mine,"  he  wrote  to  Strahan  several 
years  before  his  first  mission  to  England,  "God  send  our 
children  good  and  suitable  matches,  for  I  begin  to  feel  a 
parents'  cares  in  that  respect,  and  fondly  wish  to  see 
them  well  settled  before  I  leave  them."  A  little  later, 
he  has  arranged  the  match  so  entirely  to  his  satisfaction, 
and,  as  the  event  proved,  to  that  of  Strahan  too,  that 
he  writes  glibly  to  Strahan  of  William  Strahan  as  "our 
son  Billy"  and  of  Sally  as  "our  daughter  Sally."  The 
same  letter  foreshadows  the  mission  to  England  that 
brought  the  two  friends  for  the  first  time  face  to  face. 
"Our  Assembly,"  it  said,  "talk  of  sending  me  to  England 
speedily.  Then  look  out  sharp,  and  if  a  fat  old  fellow 
should  come  to  your  printing-house  and  request  a  little 
smouting,  depend  upon  it  'tis  your  affectionate  friend  and 
humble  servant." 

The  earlier  cis-Atlantic  letters  of  Franklin  to  Strahan 
are  mainly  letters  of  business  over  which  we  need  not 
linger  here;  but  they  contain  some  paragraphs  of  general 
interest  besides  those  relating  to  Sally  and  Master  Billy. 
In  one  place,  Franklin  declares  that  he  is  glad  that  the 
Polybius,  which  he  had  ordered  from  Strahan,  did  not  come ; 
it  was  intended  for  his  son,  who  was,  when  the  order 


394  v     Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

was  given,  in  the  army,  and  apparently  bent  on  a  military 
life,  but  that,  as  peace  had  cut  off  the  prospect  of  advance- 
ment in  that  way,  his  son  would  apply  himself  to  other 
business.  In  any  event,  Polybius  would  appear  to  have 
been  a  rather  pedantic  authority  for  the  military  opera- 
tions of  the  American  backwoods.  The  other  business 
to  which  William  Franklin  had  decided  to  apply  himself 
was  that  of  the  profession,  which,  in  the  opinion  of 
the  general  public,  approximates  most  nearly  to  a  state 
of  warfare — the  law,  and,  in  the  letters  from  Franklin  to 
Strahan,  William's  altered  plans  are  brought  home  to  us 
in  the  form  of  orders  for  law  books  and  the  request  that 
Strahan  would  have  William  entered  as  a  student  at  the 
Inns  of  Court. 

These  earlier  letters  also  contain  some  piquant  com- 
ments on  colonial  conditions.  Such  are  the  remarks 
prompted  by  Pope's  sneer  in  the  Dunciad  at  the  supposed 
popularity  of  the  poetaster,  Ward,  in  "  ape-and-monkey 
climes." 


That  Poet  has  many  Admirers  here,  and  the  Reflection  he 
somewhere  casts  on  the  Plantations  as  if  they  had  a  Relish 
for  such  Writers  as  Ward  only,  is  injurious.  Your  Authors 
know  but  little  of  the  Fame  they  have  on  this  side  of  the 
Ocean.  We  are  a  kind  of  Posterity  in  respect  to  them.  We 
read  their  Works  with  perfect  impartiality,  being  at  too  great 
distance  to  be  byassed  by  the  Factions,  Parties  and  Prejudices 
that  prevail  among  you.  We  know  nothing  of  their  Personal 
Failings;  the  Blemishes  in  their  Character  never  reaches  (sic) 
us,  and  therefore  the  bright  and  amiable  part  strikes  us  with 
its  full  Force.  They  have  never  offended  us  or  any  of  our 
Friends,  and  we  have  no  competitions  with  them,  therefore 
we  praise  and  admire  them  without  Restraint.  Whatever 
Thomson  writes  send  me  a  dozen  copies  of.  I  had  read  no 
poetry  for  several  years,  and  almost  lost  the  Relish  of  it,  till 
I  met  with  his  Seasons.  That  charming  Poet  has  brought 
more  Tears  of  Pleasure  into  my  Eyes  than  all  I  ever  read 


Franklin's  British  Friends  395 

before.     I  wish  it  were  in  my  Power  to  return  him  any  Part 
of  the  Joy  he  has  given  me. 

Many  years  later,  some  appreciative  observations  of 
the  same  critic  on  the  poetry  of  Cowper  were  to  make 
even  that  unhappy  poet  little  less  proud  than  the  girl 
in  the  Tatler  with  the  new  pair  of  garters. 

The  friendship,  initiated  by  the  early  letters  of  Franklin 
to  Strahan,  ripened  fast  into  the  fullest  and  freest 
intimacy  when  Franklin  went  over  to  England  in  1757. 
They  were  both  printers,  to  begin  with,  and  were  both 
very  social  in  their  tastes.  Strahan  was  besides  no  mean 
political  quid  nunc,  and  Franklin  was  all  his  life  an  active 
politician.  So  interesting  were  the  reports  that  he  made 
to  Franklin  at  the  latter's  request  on  political  conditions 
in  England,  after  Franklin  returned  to  America  from  his 
first  mission  to  that  country,  that  Franklin  acknowledged 
his  debt  in  these  flattering  terms : 

Your  accounts  are  so  clear,  circumstantial,  and  complete, 
that  the'  there  is  nothing  too  much,  nothing  is  wanting  to 
give  us,  as  I  imagine,  a  more  perfect  knowledge  of  your  publick 
affairs  than  most  poeple  have  that  live  among  you.  The 
characters  of  your  speakers  and  actors  are  so  admirably 
sketch'd,  and  their  views  so  plainly  opened,  that  we  see  and 
know  everybody;  they  all  become  of  our  acquaintance.  So 
excellent  a  manner  of  writing  seems  to  me  a  superfluous  gift 
to  a  mere  printer.  If  you  do  not  commence  author  for  the 
benefit  of  mankind,  you  will  certainly  be  found  guilty  hereafter 
of  burying  your  talent.  It  is  true  that  it  will  puzzle  the  Devil 
himself  to  find  anything  else  to  accuse  you  of,  but  remember 
he  may  make  a  great  deal  of  that.  If  I  were  king  (which 
may  God  in  mercy  to  us  all  prevent)  I  should  certainly  make 
you  the  historiographer  of  my  reign.  There  could  be  but  one 
objection — I  suspect  you  might  be  a  little  partial  in  my  favor. 

"Straney"  was  the  affectionate  nickname  by  which 
Franklin  addressed  Strahan  after  he  came  into  personal 


396      Benjamin  FfanKlih  Self-Revealed 

contact  with  him,  and,  as  usual,  the  friendship  that  he 
formed  for  the  head  of  the  family  drew  all  the  other  mem- 
bers of  the  family  within  its  folds.  His  friendship  was 
rarely,  we  believe,  confined  to  one  member  of  a  family. 
That  was  the  reason  why,  in  one  of  his  last  letters  to  Mrs. 
Hewson,  he  could  picture  his  condition  in  Philadelphia 
in  these  terms:  "The  companions  of  my  youth  are 
indeed  almost  all  departed,  but  I  find  an  agreeable  society 
among  their  children  and  grandchildren."  And  so,  in 
Franklin's  relations  with  the  Strahans,  we  find  his  affec- 
tion taking  in  all  the  members  of  the  household.  "My 
dear  Love  to  Mrs.  Strahan,"  he  says  in  a  letter  to  Strahan 
from  Philadelphia  in  1762,  "and  bid  her  be  well  for  all 
our  sakes.  Remember  me  affectionately  to  Rachey  and 
my  little  Wife  and  to  your  promising  Sons  my  young 
Friends  Billy,  George  and  Andrew."  A  similar  message 
in  another  letter  to  Strahan  is  followed  by  the  statement, 
"I  hope  to  live  to  see  George  a  Bishop,"  and,  a  few  days 
afterwards,  Franklin  recurs  to  the  subject  in  these  terms : 
"Tell  me  whether  George  is  to  be  a  Church  or  Presbyterian 
parson.  '  I  know  you  are  a  Presbyterian  yourself;  but 
then  I  think  you  have  more  sense  than  to  stick  him  into 
a  priesthood  that  admits  of  no  promotion.  If  he  was  a 
dull  lad  it  might  not  be  amiss,  but  George  has  parts, 
and  ought  to  aim  at  a  mitre." 

There  are  other  repeated  references  in  Franklin's  letters 
to  Strahan's  daughter  whom  Franklin  called  his  wife. 
"I  rejoice  to  hear,"  he  says  in  one  of  them,  "that  Mrs. 
Strahan  is  recovering;  that  your  family  in  general  is 
well,  and  that  my- little  woman  in  particular  is  so,  and  has 
not  forgot  our  tender  connection."  In  a  letter,  which  we 
have  already  quoted,  after  charging  Strahan  with  not 
being  as  good-natured  as  he  ought  to  be,  he  says,  "I  am 
glad,  however  that  you  have  this  fault;  for  a  man  without 
faults  is  a  hateful  creature.  He  puts  all  his  friends  out  of 
countenance;  but  I  love  you  exceedingly." 


Franklin's  British  Friends  397 

As  for  Strahan,  he  loved  Franklin  so  exceedingly  that 
in  his  effort  to  bring  Deborah  over  to  England  he  did  not 
stop  short,  as  we  have  seen,  of  letting  her  know  that,  when 
she  arrived,  there  would  be  a  ready-made  son-in-law  to 
greet  her.  Indeed  the  idea  of  fixing  Franklin  in  England 
appears  to  have  been  the  darling  project  of  his  heart  if 
we  are  to  judge  by  the  frequency  with  which  Franklin  had 
to  oppose  Deborah's  fear  of  the  sea  to  his  importunity. 
More  than  once  it  must  have  appeared  to  him  as  if  the 
eloquence  on  which  he  prided  himself  so  greatly  would 
bear  down  all  difficulties.  After  Franklin  in  1762  had 
been  for  two  nights  on  board  of  the  ship  at  Portsmouth 
which  was  to  take  him  to  America,  but  was  kept  in  port  by 
adverse  winds,  he  wrote  to  Strahan: 

The  Attraction  of  Reason  is  at  present  for  the  other  side  of 
the  Water,  but  that  of  Inclination  will  be  for  this  side.  You 
know  which  usually  prevails.  I  shall  probably  make  but 
this  one  Vibration,  and  settle  here  forever.  Nothing  will 
prevent  it,  if  I  can,  as  I  hope  I  can,  prevail  with  Mrs.  F.  to 
accompany  me. 

That,  he  said  in  a  subsequent  letter,  would  be  the  great 
difficulty.  The  next  year,  he  even  wrote  to  Strahan 
from  America,  after  his  journey  of  eleven  hundred  and 
forty  miles  on  the  American  continent  that  year,  that  no 
friend  could  wish  him  more  in  England  than  he  did 
himself,  though,  before  he  went,  everything,  in  which  he 
was  concerned,  must  be  so  settled  in  America  as  to  make 
another  return  to  it  unnecessary.  But,  in  the  course  of 
his  life,  Franklin,  with  his  sensibility  to  social  attentions 
and  freedom  from  provincial  restrictions,  professed  his 
preference  for  so  many  parts  of  the  world  as  a  place  of 
residence  that  statements  of  this  kind  should  not  be 
accepted  too  literally. 

In  one  of  his  letters  to  Strahan,  before  his  return  to 
England,  on  his  second  mission,  there  is  a  sly  stroke  that 


398       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

gives  us  additional  insight  into  the  intimate  relations 
which  the  two  men  had  contracted  with  each  other. 

You  tell  me  [Franklin  said]  that  the  value  I  set  on  your 
political  letters  is  a  strong  proof  that  my  judgment  is  on  the 
decline.  People  seldom  have  friends  kind  enough  to  tell 
them  that  disagreeable  truth,  however  useful  it  might  be  to 
know  it ;  and  indeed  I  learn  more  from  what  you  say  than  you 
intended  I  should;  for  it  convinces  me  that  you  had  observed 
the  decline  for  some  time  past  in  other  instances,  as  'tis  very 
unlikely  you  should  see  it  first  in  my  good  opinion  of  your 
writings. 

With  Franklin's  return  to  England  on  his  second  mis- 
sion, the  old  friendly  intercourse  between  Strahan  and 
himself  was  resumed,  but  it  came  wholly  to  an  end  during 
the  American  Revolution;  for  Strahan  was  the  King's 
Printer,  an  inveterate  Tory,  and  one  of  the  ministerial 
phalanx,  which  followed  George  III.  blindly.  When  the 
dragon's  teeth  sown  by  the  King  began  to  spring  up  in 
serried  ranks,  Franklin  wrote,  but  did  not  send,  to  Strahan 
the  letter,  which  is  so  well  known  as  to  almost  make 
transcription  unnecessary. 

Mr.  Strahan, 

You  are  a  Member  of  Parliament,  and  one  of  that  Majority 
which  has  doomed  my  Country  to  Destruction. — You  have 
begun  to  burn  our  Towns,  and  murder  our  People. — Look  upon 
your  Hands!  They  are  stained  with  the  Blood  of  your  Rela- 
tions!— You  and  I  were  long  Friends: — You  are  now  my 
Enemy, — and  I  am 

Yours, 

B.  Franklin. 

In  this  instance,  also,  Franklin  was  but  true  to  his 
practice  of  sometimes  inserting  a  quip  or  a  quirk  into 
even  the  gravest  contexts. 

Not  until  December  4,  1781,  does  the  silence  between 
the  two  friends,  produced  by  the  Revolution,  appear  to 


Franklin's  British  Friends  399 

have  been  really  broken.  On  that  date,  Franklin  wrote 
to  Strahan  a  formal  letter,  addressing  him  no  longer  as 
"Dear  Straney, "  but  as  "Dear  Sir, "  and  concluding  with 
none  of  the  former  affectionate  terminations,  but  in  the 
stiffest  terms  of  obsequious  eighteenth  century  courtesy. 
The  ostensible  occasion  for  the  letter  was  a  package  of 
letters  which  he  asked  Strahan  to  forward  to  Mrs.  Strange, 
the  wife  of  Robert  Strange,  the  celebrated  engraver, 
whose  address  he  did  not  remember.  He  also  asked 
Strahan  for  a  copy  of  the  Tully  on  Old  Age,  which  Franklin 
had  printed  in  Philadelphia  many  years  before,  and  had 
endeavored  to  sell  in  part  in  London  through  Strahan. 
Well  maintained  as  the  reserve  of  this  letter  is,  it  is 
plainly  enough  that  of  a  man,  who  is  feeling  his  way  a 
little  cautiously,  because  he  does  not  know  just  how  his 
approaches  will  be  received.  Between  the  lines,  we  can 
see  that  the  real  object  of  the  requests  about  the  package 
of  letters  and  the  Latin  classic  was  to  find  out  whether 
Franklin's  treason  had  killed  all  desire  on  Straney's  part 
to  open  a  second  bottle  with  him.  There  is  a  by-reference 
to  Didot  le  Jeune,  who  was  bidding  fair  to  carry  the  art 
of  fine  printing  to  a  high  pitch  of  perfection,  and  an 
expression  of  pleasure  that  Strahan  had  married  his 
daughter  happily,  and  that  his  prosperity  continued. 
"I  hope,"  Franklin  said,  "it  may  never  meet  with  any 
Interruption  having  still,  tho'  at  present  divided  by 
public  Circumstances,  a  Remembrance  of  our  ancient 
private  Friendship."  Nor  did  he  fail  to  present  his 
affectionate  respects  to  Mrs.  Strahan  and  his  love  to 
Strahan's  children.  The  olive  branch  was  distinctly 
held  out,  but,  just  about  the  time  that  this  letter  reached 
Strahan,  the  ministry,  of  which  he  was  such  an  unfaltering 
adherent,  suffered  a  defeat  on  the  American  question, 
and  the  Tully  was  transmitted  by  Mrs.  Strange's  husband 
with  the  statement  that  he  really  believed  that  Strahan 
himself  would  have  written  to  Franklin  but  for  the  smart 


400       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

of  the  Parliamentary  disaster  of  that  morning.  Several 
years  later,  there  came  to  Franklin  an  acknowledgment 
by  Strahan  of  the  very  friendly  and  effectual  patronage 
which  had  been  afforded  to  a  distant  kinswoman  of  his 
at  Philadelphia  by  Franklin's  family.  The  letter  also 
eagerly  urged  Franklin  to  come  to  England  once  more, 
and  with  Franklin's  reply,  signed  " yours  ever  most  affec- 
tionately,"  the  old  entente  was  fully  re-established.  In 
the  high  animal  spirits,  aroused  by  the  renewal  of  the 
former  relationship,  he  fell  back  upon  the  technical  terms 
of  the  printing  house,  so  familiar  to  the  two  friends,  for 
the  purpose  of  illustrating  his  pet  proposition  that  England 
would  never  be  at  rest  until  all  the  enormous  salaries, 
emoluments  and  patronage  of  her  great  offices  were 
abolished,  and  these  offices  were  made,  instead  of  places 
of  profit,  places  of  expense  and  burthen. 


Ambition  and  avarice  [he  said]  are  each  of  them  strong 
Passions,  and  when  they  are  united  in  the  same  Persons,  and 
have  the  same  Objects  in  view  for  their  Gratification,  they 
are  too  strong  for  Public  Spirit  and  Love  of  Country,  and 
are  apt  to  produce  the  most  violent  Factions  and  Contentions. 
They  should  therefore  be  separated,  and  made  to  act  one  against 
the  other.  Those  Places,  to  speak  in  our  old  stile  (Brother 
Type)  may  be  for  the  good  of  the  Chapel,  but  they  are  bad  for 
the  Master,  as  they  create  constant  Quarrels  that  hinder  the 
Business.  For  example,  here  are  near  two  Months  that  your 
Government  has  been  employed  in  getting  its  form  to  press; 
which  is  not  yet  fit  to  work  on,  every  Page  of  it  being  squabbled, 
and  the  whole  ready  to  fall  into  pye.  The  Founts  too  must  be 
very  scanty,  or  strangely  out  of  sorts,  since  your  Compositors 
cannot  find  either  upper  or  lower  case  Letters  sufficient  to  set 
the  word  administration,  but  are  forc'd  to  be  continually 
turning  for  them.  However,  to  return  to  common  (tho'  perhaps 
too  saucy)  Language,  don't  despair;  you  have  still  one  re- 
source left,  and  that  not  a  bad  one,  since  it  may  reunite  the 
Empire.     We  have  some  Remains  of  Affection  for  you,  and 


Franklin's  British  Friends  401 

shall  always  be  ready  to  receive  and  take  care  of  you  in  Case 
of  Distress.  So  if  you  have  not  Sense  and  Virtue  enough  to 
govern  yourselves,  e'en  dissolve  your  present  old  crazy  Con- 
stitution, and  send  members  to  Congress. 

This  is  the  letter  that  Franklin  said  was  mere  chit-chat 
between  themselves  over  the  second  bottle.  Where 
America  was  concerned,  Strahan  was  almost  credulous 
enough  to  have  even  swallowed  the  statement  in  Franklin's 
humorous  letter  "To  the  Editor  of  a  Newspaper, "  written 
about  the  time  of  the  Stamp  Act  in  ridicule  of  English 
ignorance  respecting  America,  that  the  grand  leap  of  the 
whale  in  his  chase  of  the  cod  up  the  Fall  of  Niagara  was 
esteemed  by  all  who  had  seen  it  as  one  of  the  finest  spec- 
tacles in  Nature.  In  1783,  Captain  Nathaniel  Falconer, 
another  faithful  friend  of  Franklin,  wrote  to  him  with  the 
true  disregard  of  an  old  sea-dog  for  spelling  and  syntax: 
"I  have  been  over  to  your  old  friends  Mr.  Strawns  and 
find  him  just  the  same  man,  believes  every  Ly  he  hears 
against  the  United  States,  the  French  Army  and  our 
Army  have  been  killing  each  other,  and  that  we  shall  be 
glad  to  come  to  this  country  again."  In  reply,  Franklin 
said:  "I  have  still  a  regard  for  Mr.  Strahan  in  remem- 
brance of  our  ancient  Friendship,  tho'  he  has  as  a  Member 
of  Parliament  dipt  his  Hands  in  our  Blood.  He  was 
always  as  credulous  as  you  find  him."  And,  if  what 
Franklin  further  says  in  this  letter  is  true,  Strahan  was 
not  only  credulous  himself  but  not  above  publishing 
mendacious  letters  about  America  as  written  from  New 
York,  which  in  point  of  fact  were  fabricated  in  London. 
A  little  over  a  year  later,  when  the  broken  bones  of  the 
ancient  friendship  had  reknit,  Franklin  had  his  chance 
to  remind  Strahan  of  the  extent  to  which  he  and  those  of 
the  same  mind  with  him  had  been  deceived  by  their  gross 
misconceptions  of  America.  His  opportunity  came  in  the 
form  of  a  reply  to  a  letter  from  Strahan  withholding  his 
assent  from  the  idea  of  Franklin,  so  utterly  repugnant  to 

VOL.  II. — 26 


402       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

the  working  principles  of  Strahan's  party  associates,  that 
public  service  should  be  rendered  gratuitously.  "There 
are,  I  make  no  doubt,"  said  Franklin  "many  wise  and 
able  Men,  who  would  take  as  much  Pleasure  in  governing 
for  nothing,  as  they  do  in  playing  Chess  for  nothing.  It 
would  be  one  of  the  noblest  of  Amusements. ' '  Then,  when 
he  has  fortified  the  proposition  by  some  real  or  fancied 
illustrations,  drawn  from  French  usages,  he  proceeds  to 
unburden  his  mind  to  Strahan  with  a  degree  of  candor 
that  must  have  made  the  latter  wince  a  little  at  times. 

I  allow  you  [he  said]  all  the  Force  of  your  Joke  upon  the 
Vagrancy  of  our  Congress.  They  have  a  right  to  sit  where 
they  please,  of  which  perhaps  they  have  made  too  much  Use 
by  shifting  too  often.  But  they  have  two  other  Rights ;  those 
of  sitting  when  they  please,  and  as  long  as  they  please,  in  which 
methink;s  they  have  the  advantage  of  your  Parliament;  for 
they  cannot  be  dissolved  by  the  Breath  of  a  Minister,  or  sent 
packing  as  you  were  the  other  day,  when  it  was  your  earnest 
desire  to  have  remained  longer  together. 

You  "fairly  acknowledge,  that  the  late  War  terminated 
quite  contrary  to  your  Expectation."  Your  expectation  was 
ill  founded;  for  you  would  not  believe  your  old  Friend,  who 
told  you  repeatedly,  that  by  those  Measures  England  would 
lose  her  Colonies,  as  Epictetus  warned  in  vain  his  Master  that 
he  would  break  his  Leg.  You  believ'd  rather  the  Tales  you 
heard  of  our  Poltroonery  and  Impotence  of  Body  and  Mind. 
Do  you  not  remember  the  Story  you  told  me  of  the  Scotch 
sergeant,  who  met  with  a  Party  of  Forty  American  Soldiers, 
and,  tho'  alone,  disarm'd  them  all,  and  brought  them  in 
Prisoners?  A  Story  almost  as  Improbable  as  that  of  the 
Irishman,  who  pretended  to  have  alone  taken  and  brought  in 
Five  of  the  Enemy  by  surrounding  them.  And  yet,  my 
Friend,  sensible  and  Judicious  as  you  are,  but  partaking  of  the 
general  Infatuation,  you  seemed  to  believe  it. 

The  Word  general  puts  me  in  mind  of  a  General,  your  General 
Clarke,  who  had  the  Folly  to  say  in  my  hearing  at  Sir  John 
Pringle's,  that,  with  a  Thousand  British  grenadiers,  he  would 


Franklin's  British  Friends  403 

undertake  to  go  from  one  end  of  America  to  the  other,  and 
geld  all  the  Males,  partly  by  force  and  partly  by  a  little  Coaxing. 
It  is  plain  he  took  us  for  a  species  of  Animals,  very  little 
superior  to  Brutes.  The  Parliament  too  believ'd  the  stories 
of  another  foolish  General,  I  forget  his  Name,  that  the  Yankeys 
never  felt  bold.  Yankey  was  understood  to  be  a  sort  of  Yahoo, 
and  the  Parliament  did  not  think  the  Petitions  of  such  Crea- 
tures were  fit  to  be  received  and  read  in  so  wise  an  Assembly. 
What  was  the  consequence  of  this  monstrous  Pride  and 
Insolence?  You  first  sent  small  Armies  to  subdue  us,  believ- 
ing them  more  than  sufficient,  but  soon  found  yourselves 
obliged  to  send  greater;  these,  whenever  they  ventured  to 
penetrate  our  Country  beyond  the  Protection  of  their  Ships, 
were  either  repulsed  and  obliged  to  scamper  out,  or  were 
surrounded,  beaten  and  taken  Prisoners.  An  America  Planter, 
who  had  never  seen  Europe,  was  chosen  by  us  to  Command  our 
Troops,  and  continued  during  the  whole  War.  This  Man 
sent  home  to  you,  one  after  another,  five  of  your  best  Generals 
baffled,  their  Heads  bare  of  Laurels,  disgraced  even  in  the 
opinion  of  their  Employers. 

Your  contempt  of  our  Understandings,  in  Comparison  with 
your  own,  appeared  to  be  not  much  better  founded  than  that 
of  our  Courage,  if  we  may  judge  by  this  Circumstance,  that, 
in  whatever  Court  of  Europe  a  Yankey  negociator  appeared, 
the  wise  British  Minister  was  routed,  put  in  a  passion,  pick'd 
a  quarrel  with  your  Friends,  and  was  sent  home  with  a  Flea  in 
his  Ear. 

But  after  all,  my  dear  Friend,  do  not  imagine  that  I  am 
vain  enough  to  ascribe  our  Success  to  any  superiority  in  any 
of  those  Points.  I  am  too  well  acquainted  with  all  the  Springs 
and  Levers  of  our  Machine,  not  to  see,  that  our  human  means 
were  unequal  to  our  undertaking,  and  that,  if  it  had  not  been 
for  the  Justice  of  our  Cause,  and  the  consequent  Interposition 
of  Providence,  in  which  we  had  Faith,  we  must  have  been 
ruined.  If  I  had  ever  before  been  an  Atheist,  I  should  now 
have  been  convinced  of  the  Being  and  Government  of  a  Deity! 
It  is  he  who  abases  the  Proud  and  favours  the  Humble.  May 
we  never  forget  his  Goodness  to  us,  and  may  our  future  Con- 
duct manifest  our  Gratitude. 


404       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

It  was  characteristic  of  Franklin  to  open  his  heart  to  a 
friend  in  this  candid  way  even  upon  sensitive  topics,  and 
there  can  be  no  better  proof  of  the  instinctive  confidence 
of  his  friends  in  the  essential  good  feeling  that  under- 
lay such  candor  than  the  fact  that  they  never  took 
offence  at  utterances  of  this  sort.  They  knew  too  well 
the  constancy  of  affection  and  placability  of  temper  which 
caused  him  to  justly  say  of  himself  in  a  letter  to  Strahan, 
"I  like  immortal  friendships,  but  not  immortal  enmities." 

The  retrospective  letter  from  which  we  have  just  quoted 
had  its  genial  afterglow  as  all  Franklin's  letters  had,  when 
he  had  reason  to  think  that  he  had  written  something  at 
which  a  relative  or  a  friend  might  take  umbrage. 

But  let  us  leave  these  serious  Reflections  [he  went  on], 
and  converse  with  our  usual  Pleasantry.  I  remember  your 
observing  once  to  me  as  we  sat  together  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, that  no  two  Journeymen  Printers,  within  your  Knowl- 
edge, had  met  with  such  Success  in  the  World  as  ourselves. 
You  were  then  at  the  head  of  your  Profession,  and  soon  after- 
wards became  a  Member  of  Parliament.  I  was  an  Agent  for  a 
few  Provinces,  and  now  act  for  them  all.  But  we  have  risen 
by  different  Modes.  I,  as  a  Republican  Printer,  always  liked 
a  Form  well  plain' d  down;  being  averse  to  those  overbearing 
Letters  that  hold  their  Heads  so  high,  as  to  hinder  their 
Neighbours  from  appearing.  You,  as  a  Monarchist,  chose  to 
work  upon  Crown  Paper,  and  found  it  profitable;  while  I 
work'd  upon  pro  patria  (often  call'd  Fools  Cap)  with  no  less 
advantage.  Both  our  Heaps  hold  out  very  well,  and  we  seem 
likely  to  make  a  pretty  good  day's  Work  of  it.  With  regard 
to  Public  Affairs  (to  continue  in  the  same  stile)  it  seems  to 
me  that  the  Compositors  in  your  Chapel  do  not  cast  off  their 
Copy  well,  nor  perfectly  understand  Imposing;  their  Forms, 
too,  are  continually  pester'd  by  the  Outs  and  Doubles,  that 
are  not  easy  to  be  corrected.  And  I  think  they  were  wrong 
in  laying  aside  some  Faces,  and  particularly  certain  Head- 
pieces, that  would  have  been  both  useful  and  ornamental. 
But,  Courage!    The  Business  may  still  flourish  with  good 


Franklin's  British  Friends  405 

Management;  and  the  Master  become  as  rich  as  any  of  the 

Company. 

Less  than  two  years  after  these  merry  words  were 
penned,  Franklin  wrote  to  Andrew  Strahan,  Strahan's 
son,  saying,  "I  condole  with  you  most  sincerely  on  the 
Departure  of  your  good  Father  and  Mother,  my  old  and 
beloved  Friends.' ' 

Equally  dear  to  Franklin,  though  in  a  different  way,  was 
Jonathan  Shipley,  the  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph's,  whom  he 
termed  in  a  letter  to  Georgiana,  one  of  the  Bishop's 
daughters,  "that  most  honoured  and  ever  beloved  Friend." 
In  this  same  letter,  Franklin  speaks  of  the  Bishop  as  the 
"good  Bishop,"  and  then,  perhaps,  not  unmindful  of  the 
unflinching  servility  with  which  the  Bench  of  Bishops 
had  supported  the  American  policy  of  George  III.,  ex- 
claims, "Strange,  that  so  simple  a  Character  should 
sufficiently  distinguish  one  of  that  sacred  Body!" 

During  the  dispute  with  the  Colonies,  the  Bishop  was 
one  of  the  wise  Englishmen,  who  could  have  settled  the 
questions  at  issue  between  England  and  America,  to  the 
ultimate  satisfaction  of  both  countries,  with  little  diffi- 
culty, if  they  had  been  given  a  carte  blanche  to  agree  with 
Franklin  on  the  terms  upon  which  the  future  dependence 
of  America  was  to  be  based.  Two  productions  of  his, 
the  "Sermon  before  the  Society  for  Propagating  the 
Gospel  in  Foreign  Parts"  and  his  "Speech  intended  to 
have  been  spoken  on  the  Bill  for  Altering  the  Charters 
of  the  Colony  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay,"  were  among 
the  compositions  which  really  influenced  the  course  of 
the  events  that  preceded  the  American  Revolution.  We 
know  from  Franklin's  pen  that  the  sermon  was  for  a  time 
"universally  approved  and  applauded,"  and,  in  letters  to 
Thomas  Cushing,  he  said  that  the  speech  was  admired 
in  England  as  a  "  Masterpiece  of  Eloquence  and  Wisdom, " 
and  "had  an  extraordinary  Effect,  in  changing  the  Senti- 


406       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

merits  of  Multitudes  with  regard  to  America.' '  For  both 
sermon  and  speech  the  Bishop  was  all  the  more  to  be 
honored  by  Americans,  because,  as  Franklin  observed  to 
Galloway  of  the  sermon,  the  Bishop's  censure  of  the 
mother  country's  treatment  of  the  Colonies,  however 
tenderly  expressed,  could  not  recommend  him  at  court 
or  conduce  in  the  least  to  his  promotion.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  probably  cost  him  the  most  splendid  temporal 
reward  that  could  be  conferred  upon  a  Churchman,  the 
Archbishopric  of  Canterbury;  for,  when  Charles  James  Fox 
was  desirous  of  elevating  him  to  that  exalted  office,  the 
King  defeated  his  intentions  by  hastily  appointing  another 
person  to  it. 

At  Chilbolton,  by  Twyford,  the  country  seat  of  the 
Bishop,  some  of  the  most  pleasant  days  that  Franklin 
spent  in  England  were  passed.  So  fond  of  Franklin  were 
the  Bishop  and  his  wife  that  the  latter  carried  in  her 
memory  even  the  ages  of  all  Franklin's  children  and 
grandchildren.  As  he  was  on  the  point  of  leaving  Twy- 
ford, at  the  end  of  the  three  weeks'  visit,  during  which  he 
began  the  Autobiography,  she  insisted  on  his  remaining 
that  day,  so  that  they  might  all  celebrate  the  anniversary 
of  Benjamin  Bache's  birth  together.  Accordingly,  at 
dinner  there  was  among  other  things  a  floating  island, 
such  as  the  hosts  always  had  on  the  several  birthdays  of 
their  own  six  children;  all  of  whom,  with  one  exception, 
were  present  as  well  as  a  clergyman's  widow  upwards  of 
one  hundred  years  old.  The  story  is  thus  told  by  Frank- 
lin to  his  wife : 

The  chief  Toast  of  the  Day  was  Master  Benjamin  Bache, 
which  the  venerable  old  Lady  began  in  a  Bumper  of  Mountain. 
The  Bishop's  Lady  politely  added,  and  that  he  may  be  as  good 
a  Man  as  his  Grandfather.  I  said  I  hop'd  he  would  be  much 
better.  The  Bishop,  still  more  complaisant  than  his  Lady, 
said,  "We  will  compound  the  Matter,  and  be  contented,  if  he 
should  not  prove  quite  so  good."     This  Chitchat  is  to  yourself 


Franklin  s  British  Friends  407 

only,  in  return  for  some  of  yours  about  your  Grandson,  and 
must  only  be  read  to  Sally,  and  not  spoken  of  to  anybody 
else ;  for  you  know  how  People  add  and  alter  Silly  stories  that 
they  hear,  and  make  them  appear  ten  times  more  silly. 

The  room  at  the  Bishop's  home,  in  which  the  Auto- 
biography  was  begun,  was  ever  subsequently  known  as 
Franklin's  room.  After  his  return  to  America  from 
France,  Catherine  Louisa  Shipley,  one  of  the  Bishop's 
daughters,  wrote  to  him,  "We  never  walk  in  the  garden 
without  seeing  Dr.  Franklin's  room  and  thinking  of  the 
work  that  was  begun  in  it."  In  a  letter  to  the  Bishop 
in  1 77 1,  Franklin  says: 

I  regret  my  having  been  oblig'd  to  leave  that  most  agreeable 
Retirement  which  good  Mrs.  Shipley  put  me  so  kindly  in 
possession  of.  I  now  breathe  with  Reluctance  the  Smoke  of 
London,  when  I  think  of  the  sweet  Air  of  Twyford.  And  by 
the  Time  your  Races  are  over,  or  about  the  Middle  of  next 
Month  (if  it  should  then  not  be  unsuitable  to  your  Engage- 
ments or  other  Purposes)  I  promise  myself  the  Happiness  of 
spending  another  Week  or  two  where  I  so  pleasantly  spent  the 
last. 

Close  behind  this  letter,  went  also  one  of  his  " books," 
which  he  hoped  that  Miss  Georgiana,  another  daughter 
of  the  Bishop,  would  be  good  enough  to  accept  as  a  small 
mark  of  his  " Regard  for  her  philosophic  Genius,"  and  a 
quantity  of  American  dried  apples  for  Mrs.  Shipley. 
A  month  later,  he  writes  to  the  Bishop  that  he  had  been 
prevented  from  coming  to  Twyford  by  business,  but  that 
he  purposed  to  set  out  on  the  succeeding  Tuesday  for 
"that  sweet  Retreat."  How  truly  sweet  it  was  to  him  a 
letter  that  he  subsequently  wrote  to  Georgiana  from  Passy 
enables  us  in  some  measure  to  realize.  Among  other 
things,  it  contained  these  winning  and  affecting  words: 

Accept  my  Thanks  for  your  Friendly  Verses  and  good 
Wishes.     How  many  Talents  you  possess !     Painting,  Poetry, 


408       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Languages,  etc.,  etc.     All  valuable,  but  your  good  Heart  is 
worth  the  whole. 

Your  mention  of  the  Summer  House  brings  fresh  to  my 
mind  all  the  Pleasures  I  enjoyed  in  the  sweet  Retreat  at 
Twyford :  the  Hours  of  agreeable  and  instructive  Conversation 
with  the  amiable  Family  at  Table;  with  its  Father  alone;  the 
delightful  Walks  in  the  Gardens  and  neighbouring  Grounds. 
Pleasures  past  and  gone  forever!  Since  I  have  had  your 
Father's  Picture  I  am  grown  more  covetous  of  the  rest ;  every 
time  I  look  at  your  second  Drawing  I  have  regretted  that  you 
have  not  given  to  your  Juno  the  Face  of  Anna  Maria,  to  Venus 
that  of  Emily  or  Betsey,  and  to  Cupid  that  of  Emily's  Child, 
as  it  would  have  cost  you  but  little  more  Trouble.  I  must, 
however,  beg  that  you  will  make  me  up  a  compleat  Set  of  your 
little  Profiles,  which  are  more  easily  done.  You  formerly 
obliged  me  with  that  of  the  Father,  an  excellent  one.  Let 
me  also  have  that  of  the  good  Mother,  and  of  all  the  Children. 
It  will  help  me  to  fancy  myself  among  you,  and  to  enjoy  more 
perfectly  in  Idea,  the  Pleasure  of  your  Society.  My  little 
Fellow-Traveller,  the  sprightly  Hetty,  with  whose  sensible 
Prattle  I  was  so  much  entertained,  why  does  she  not  write  to 
me?  If  Paris  affords  anything  that  any  of  you  wish  to  have, 
mention  it.  You  will  oblige  me.  It  affords  everything  but 
Peace!    Ah!    When  shall  we  again  enjoy  that  Blessing. 

Previously  he  had  written  to  Thomas  Digges  that  the 
portrait  of  the  Bishop  mentioned  by  him  had  not  come  to 
hand;  nor  had  he  heard  anything  of  it,  and  that  he  was 
anxious  to  see  it,  "having  no  hope  of  living  to  see  again  the 
much  lov'd  and  respected  original."  His  request  for  the 
little  profiles  of  the  Shipleys  was  complied  with,  we 
know,  because  in  a  letter  to  the  Bishop  some  two  years 
afterwards  he  said:  "Your  Shades  are  all  plac'd  in  a 
Row  over  my  Fireplace,  so  that  I  not  only  have  you  always 
in  my  Mind,  but  constantly  before  my  Eyes."  This 
letter  was  written  in  reply  to  a  letter  from  the  Bishop 
which  was  the  first  to  break  the  long  silence  that  the 
war  between  Great  Britain  and  America  had  imposed 


Franklin's  British  Friends  409 

upon  the  two  friends.  "After  so  long  a  Silence,  and  the 
long  Continuance  of  its  unfortunate  Causes,"  Franklin 
began,  "a  Line  from  you  was  a  Prognostic  of  happier 
Times  approaching,  when  we  may  converse  and  com- 
municate freely,  without  Danger  from  the  Malevolence  of 
Men  enrag'd  by  the  ill  success  of  their  distracted  Projects." 

Among  the  entries  in  the  desultory  Journal  that  Frank- 
lin kept  of  his  return  from  France  to  America,  are  these 
relating  to  the  visit  paid  him  at  Southampton  by  the 
Bishop:  "Wrote  a  letter  to  the  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph, 
acquainting  him  with  my  arrival,  and  he  came  with  his 
lady  and  daughter,  Miss  Kitty,  after  dinner,  to  see  us; 
they  talk  of  staying  here  as  long  as  we  do.  Our  meeting 
was  very  affectionate."  For  two  or  three  days,  the 
reunited  friends  all  lodged  at  the  Star,  at  Southampton, 
and  took  their  meals  together.  The  day  before  his  ship 
sailed,  Franklin  invited  the  Bishop  and  his  wife  and 
daughter  to  accompany  him  on  board,  and,  when  he 
retired,  it  was  with  the  expectation  that  they  would 
spend  the  night  on  the  ship,  but,  when  he  awoke  the  next 
morning,  he  found  that  they  had  thoughtfully  left  the 
ship,  after  he  retired,  to  relieve  the  poignancy  of  the 
farewell,  and  that  he  was  off  on  his  westward  course. 

In  his  last  letter  to  the  Bishop,  Franklin  expresses  his 
regret  that  conversation  between  them  at  Southampton 
had  been  cut  short  so  frequently  by  third  persons,  and 
thanks  him  for  the  pleasure  that  he  derived  from  the  copy 
of  Paley's  Moral  Philosophy,  given  to  him  by  the  Bishop 
there.  Along  with  the  usual  contradiction  of  the  English 
and  Loyalist  view  at  this  time  of  our  national  condition, 
and  the  usual  picture  of  himself  encircled  by  his  grand- 
children, he  indulges  in  these  striking  reflections  about  the 
chequered  fate  of  parental  expectations : 

He  that  raises  a  large  Family  does,  indeed,  while  he  lives  to 
observe  them,  stand,  as  Watts  says,  a  broader  Mark  for  Sorrow; 


410      Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

but  then  he  stands  a  broader  Mark  for  Pleasure  too.  When 
we  launch  our  little  Fleet  of  Barques  into  the  Ocean,  bound  to 
different  Ports,  we  hope  for  each  a  prosperous  Voyage;  but 
contrary  Winds,  hidden  Shoals,  Storms,  and  Enemies  come  in 
for  a  Share  in  the  Disposition  of  Events ;  and  though  these 
occasion  a  Mixture  of  Disappointment,  yet,  considering  the 
Risque  where  we  can  make  no  Insurance,  we  should  think 
ourselves  happy  if  some  return  with  Success. 

Timed  as  they  were,  the  force  of  these  reflections  were 
not  likely  to  be  lost  upon  the  Bishop.  Some  years  before, 
Georgiana  had  married  with  his  bitter  disapproval  Francis 
Hare-Naylor,  the  writer  of  plays  and  novels,  and  author  of 
the  History  of  the  Helvetic  Republics,  who  was  so  unfortu- 
nate as  to  be  arrested  for  debt  during  his  courtship, 
while  in  the  episcopal  coach  of  the  Bishop  with  Georgiana 
and  her  parents.  After  the  Bishop  refused  to  recognize 
the  husband,  the  Duchess  of  Devonshire  settled  an 
annuity  of  three  hundred  pounds  a  year  upon  the,  couple, 
and  among  the  wise,  weighty  letters  of  Franklin  is  one  that 
he  wrote  from  France  to  Georgiana,  after  her  marriage, 
in  which  he  replies  to  her  inquiries  about  the  opening 
that  America  would  afford  to  a  young  married  couple,  and 
refers  to  this  annuity.  The  concluding  portion  of  this 
letter  also  has  its  value  as  another  illustration  of  the  calm 
manner  in  which  Franklin  looked  forward  to  his  end. 
He  tells  Georgiana  that,  if  he  should  be  in  America,  when 
they  were  there,  his  best  counsels  and  services  would  not 
be  wanting,  and  that  to  see  her  happily  settled  and  prosper- 
ous there  would  give  him  infinite  pleasure,  but  that,  of 
course,  if  he  ever  arrived  there,  his  stay  could  be  but  short. 

Franklin  survived  the  Bishop,  and  his  letter  to  Catherine, 
in  reply  to  hers,  announcing  the  death  of  her  father,  is 
in  his  best  vein. 

That  excellent  man  has  then  left  us!  His  departure  is  a 
loss,  not  to  his  family  and  friends  only,  but  to  his  nation, 


Franklin's  British  Friends  411 

and  to  the  world;  for  he  was  intent  on  doing  good,  had  wisdom 
to  devise  the  means,  and  talents  to  promote  them.  His 
"  Sermon  before  the  Society  for  Propagating  the  Gospel," 
and  his  "Speech  intended  to  have  been  spoken,"  are  proofs 
of  his  ability  as  well  as  his  humanity.  Had  his  counsels  in 
those  pieces  been  attended  to  by  the  ministers,  how  much 
bloodshed  might  have  been  prevented,  and  how  much  expense 
and  disgrace  to  the  nation  avoided ! 

Your  reflections  on  the  constant  calmness  and  composure 
attending  his  death  are  very  sensible.  Such  instances  seem 
to  show,  that  the  good  sometimes  enjoy  in  dying  a  foretaste 
of  the  happy  state  they  are  about  to  enter. 

According  to  the  course  of  years,  I  should  have  quitted  this 
world  long  before  him.  I  shall  however  not  be  long  in  follow- 
ing. I  am  now  in  my  eighty-fourth  year,  and  the  last  year  has 
considerably  enfeebled  me;  so  that  I  hardly  expect  to  remain 
another.  You  will  then,  my  dear  friend,  consider  this  as 
probably  the  last  line  to  be  received  from  me,  and  as  a  taking 
leave.  Present  my  best  and  most  sincere  respects  to  your 
good  mother,  and  love  to  the  rest  of  the  family,  to  whom  I  wish 
all  happiness;  and  believe  me  to  be,  while  I  do  live,  yours  most 
affectionately. 


His  friendship  in  this  instance,  as  usual,  embraced  the 
whole  family.  In  a  letter  in  1783  to  Sir  William  Jones, 
the  accomplished  lawyer  and  Oriental  scholar,  who 
married  Anna  Maria,  one  of  the  Bishop's  daughters,  he 
said  that  he  flattered  himself  that  he  might  in  the  ensuing 
summer  be  able  to  undertake  a  trip  to  England  for  the 
pleasure  of  seeing  once  more  his  dear  friends  there,  among 
whom  the  Bishop  and  his  family  stood  foremost  in  his 
estimation  and  affection. 

To  the  Bishop  himself  he  wrote  from  Passy  in  the  letter 
which  mentioned  the  shades  of  the  Shipleys  above  his 
fireplace:  "Four  daughters!  how  rich!  I  have  but  one, 
and  she,  necessarily  detain' d  from  me  at  1000  leagues 
distance.     I  feel  the  Want  of  that  tender  Care  of  me, 


412      Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

which  might  be  expected  from  a  Daughter,  and  would 
give  the  World  for  one." 

And  later  in  this  letter  he  says  with  the  bountiful 
affection,  which  made  him  little  less  than  a  member  of 
the  families  of  some  of  his  friends,  "Please  to  make  my 
best  Respects  acceptable  to  Mrs.  Shipley,  and  embrace 
for  me  tenderly  all  our  dear  Children." 

At  the  request  of  Catherine,  he  wrote  the  Art  of  Pro- 
curing Pleasant  Dreams  in  which  hygiene  and  the  import- 
ance of  preserving  a  good  conscience  are  so  gracefully 
blended,  and  received  from  her  a  reply,  in  which,  after 
declaring  that  it  flattered  her  exceedingly  that  he  should 
employ  so  much  of  his  precious  time  in  complying  with 
her  request,  she  put  to  him  the  question,  "But  where 
do  you  read  that  Methusaleh  slept  in  the  open  air?  I 
have  searched  the  Bible  in  vain  to  find  it." 

When  Sir  William  Jones  was  on  the  eve  of  being 
married  to  Anna  Maria,  and  of  sailing  away  to  India, 
where  he  was  to  win  so  much  distinction,  Franklin 
wrote  to  him  the  letter  already  mentioned,  joining  his 
blessing  on  the  union  with  that  of  the  good  Bishop,  and 
expressing  the  hope  that  the  prospective  bridegroom  might 
return  from  that  corrupting  country  with  a  great  deal  of 
money  honestly  acquired,  and  with  full  as  much  virtue 
as  he  carried  out. 

The  affection  that  he  felt  for  Catherine  and  Georgiana, 
his  letters  to  them,  from  which  we  have  already  quoted, 
sufficiently  reveal.  Of  the  four  daughters,  Georgiana 
was,  perhaps,  his  favorite,  and  she  is  an  example  with 
Mary  Stevenson  of  the  subtle  magnetism  that  his  intellect 
and  nature  had  for  feminine  affinities  of  mind  and  tem- 
perament. It  was  to  Georgiana,  when  a  child,  that  he 
wrote  his  well-known  letter  containing  an  epitaph  on  her 
squirrel,  which  had  been  dispatched  by  a  dog.  The  letter 
and  epitaph  are  good  enough  specimens  of  his  humor  to 
be  quoted  in  full: 


Franklin's  British  Friends  413 

Dear  Miss, 

I  lament  with  you  most  sincerely  the  unfortunate  end  of 
poor  Mungo.  Few  squirrels  were  better  accomplished;  for 
he  had  had  a  good  education,  had  travelled  far,  and  seen  much 
of  the  world.  As  he  had  the  honor  of  being,  for  his  virtues, 
your  favourite,  he  should  not  go,  like  common  skuggs,  without 
an  elegy  or  an  epitaph.  Let  us  give  him  one  in  the  monu- 
mental style  and  measure,  which,  being  neither  prose  nor 
verse,  is  perhaps  the  properest  for  grief;  since  to  use  common 
language  would  look  as  if  we  were  not  affected,  and  to  make 
rhymes  would  seem  trifling  in  sorrow. 

EPITAPH 

Alas!  poor  Mungo! 

Happy  wert  thou,  hadst  thou  known 

Thy  own  felicity. 

Remote  from  the  fierce  bald  eagle, 

Tyrant  of  thy  native  woods, 

Thou  hadst  nought  to  fear  from  his  piercing  talons, 

Nor  from  the  murdering  gun 

Of  the  thoughtless  sportsman. 

Safe  in  thy  wired  castle,     • 

grimalkin  never  could  annoy  thee. 

Daily  wert  thou  fed  with  the  choicest  viands, 

By  the  fair  hand  of  an  indulgent  mistress; 

But,  discontented, 

Thou  wouldst  have  more  freedom. 

Too  soon,  alas!  didst  thou  obtain  it; 

And  wandering, 

Thou  art  fallen  by  the  fangs  of  wanton,  cruel  Ranger! 

Learn  hence, 
Ye  who  blindly  seek  more  liberty, 
Whether  subjects,  sons,  squirrels  or  daughters,  g 
That  apparent  restraint  may  be  real  protection; 
Yielding  peace  and  plenty 

With  security. 

You  see,  my  dear  Miss,  how  much  more  decent  and  proper  this 
broken  style  is,  than  if  we  were  to  say,  by  way  of  epitaph, 


414      Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Here  skugg 
Lies  snug, 
As  a  bug 
In  a  rug. 

and  yet,  perhaps,  there  are  people  in  the  world  of  so  little 
feeling  as  to  think  that  this  would  be  a  good-enough  epitaph 
for  poor  Mungo. 

If  you  wish  it,  I  shall  procure  another  to  succeed  him;  but 
perhaps  you  will  now  choose  some  other  amusement. 

Two  of  Georgiana's  letters  to  Franklin,  after  his  arrival 
in  France,  are  very  interesting,  and  one  of  them  especially 
could  not  have  been  written  by  any  but  a  highly  gifted 
and  accomplished  woman.  In  this  letter,  the  first  of  the 
two,  she  begins  by  expressing  her  joy  at  unexpectedly 
receiving  a  letter  from  him. 

How  good  you  were  [she  exclaimed]  to  send  me  your 
direction,  but  I  fear  I  must  not  make  use  of  it  as  often  as  I 
could  wish,  since  my  father  says  it  will  be  prudent  not  to  write 
in  the  present  situation  of  affairs.  I  am  not  of  an  age  to  be  so 
very  prudent,  and  the  only  thought  that  occurred  to  me  was 
your  suspecting  that  my  silence  proceeded  from  other  motives. 
I  could  not  support  the  idea  of  your  believing  that  I  love  and 
esteem  you  less  than  I  did  some  few  years  ago.  I  therefore 
write  this  once  without  my  father's  knowledge.  You  are  the 
first  man  that  ever  received  a  private  letter  from  me,  and  in 
this  instance  I  feel  that  my  intentions  justify  my  conduct; 
but  I  must  entreat  that  you  will  take  no  notice  of  my  writing, 
when  next  I  have  the  happiness  of  hearing  from  you. 

She  then  proceeds  to  tell  Franklin  all  about  her  father, 
her  mother,  her  sister  Emily  and  Emily's  daughter,  "a 
charming  little  girl,  near  fifteen  months  old,  whom  her 
aunts  reckon  a  prodigy  of  sense  and  beauty."  The  rest 
of  her  sisters,  she  said,  continued  in  statu  quo.     Whether 


Franklin's  British  Friends  415 

that  proceeded  from  the  men  being  difficult  or  from 
their  being  difficult,  she  left  him  to  determine. 

His  friends  all  loved  him  almost  as  much  as  she  did ;  as 
much  she  would  not  admit  to  be  possible.  Dr.  Pringle  had 
made  her  extremely  happy  the  preceding  winter  by  giving 
her  a  print  of  her  excellent  friend,  which,  was  certainly 
very  like  him,  although  it  wanted  the  addition  of  his 
own  hair  to  make  it  complete;  but,  as  it  was,  she  prized 
it  infinitely,  now  that  the  dear  original  was  absent.  She 
then  has  a  word  to  say  about  Smith's  Wealth  of  Nations, 
Gibbon's  History  of  the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman 
Empire  and  the  Economics,  which  she  had  read  with 
great  attention,  as  indeed  everything  else  she  could  meet 
with  relative  to  Socrates;  for  she  fancied  she  could  dis- 
cover in  each  trait  of  that  admirable  man's  character  a 
strong  resemblance  between  him  and  her  much-loved 
friend — the  same  clearness  of  judgment,  the  same  up- 
rightness of  intention  and  the  same  superior  understanding. 
Other  words  are  bestowed  on  the  account  which  Sir 
William  Hamilton  had  lately  given  her  of  a  new  electrical 
machine  invented  in  Italy,  the  happiness  that  she  would 
enjoy,  if  Franklin  were  in  England  to  explain  it  to  her, 
and  the  envy  excited  in  her  by  the  opportunities  that  his 
grandson  had  for  showing  him  kindness  and  attention. 
"Did  my  family,"  she  further  declares,  "know  of  my 
writing,  my  letter  would  scarce  contain  the  very  many 
things  they  would  desire  me  to  say  for  them.  They  con- 
tinue to  admire  and  love  you  as  much  as  they  did  for- 
merly, nor  can  any  time  or  event  in  the  least  change  their 
sentiments." 

She  then  concludes  partly  in  French  and  partly  in 
English  in  these  words : 

Adieu,  mon  cher  Socrate;  conservez-vous  pour  l'amour  de 
moi,  et  pour  mille  autres  raisons  plus  importants.  Je  ne  vous 
en  dirai    pas    d'advantage  pour  aujourd'hui,  mais  je  veux 


41 6       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

esperer  de  vous  entretenir  plus  &  mon  aise,  avant  que  soit 
longue.  Pray  write  whenever  a  safe  conveyance  opens,  since 
the  receiving  letters  is  reckoned  very  different  from  answering 
them.  I  must  once  more  repeat  nobody  knows  of  this 
scroll;  "a  word  to  the  wise, " — as  Poor  Richard  says. 

In  her  second  letter,  Georgiana  speaks  of  the  difficulty 
she  experienced  in  having  her  letters  conveyed  safely  to 
Passy.  "Strange,"  she  declared,  "that  I  should  be  under 
the  necessity  of  concealing  from  the  world  a  correspondence 
which  it  is  the  pride  and  glory  of  my  heart  to  maintain." 
His  Dialogue  with  the  Gouty  she  said,  was  written  with  his 
own  cheerful  pleasantry,  and  La  belle  et  la  mauvaise  Jambe 
recalled  to  her  mind  those  happy  hours  they  once  passed 
in  his  society,  where  they  were  never  amused  without 
learning  some  useful  truth,  and  where  she  first  acquired 
a  taste  pour  la  conversation  badinante  and  reflechie.  Her 
father  grew  every  year  fonder  of  the  peace  of  Twyford; 
having  found  his  endeavors  to  serve  his  country  in- 
effectual, he  had  yielded  to  a  torrent  which  it  was  no  longer 
in  his  powrer  to  control.  Sir  John  Pringle  (Franklin's 
friend)  had  left  London  and  gone  to  reside  in  Scotland; 
she  feared  that  he  was  much  straitened  in  his  circumstances; 
he  looked  ill  and  was  vastly  changed  from  what  he  re- 
membered him ;  Dr.  Priestley  (another  friend  of  Franklin) 
was  then  on  a  short  visit  to  his  friends  in  town;  good  Dr. 
Price  (another  friend  of  Franklin)  called  on  them  often, 
and  gave  them  hopes  of  a  visit  to  Twyford. 

The  letter  also  informed  Franklin  that  the  first  oppor- 
tunity that  they  had  of  sending  a  parcel  to  Paris  he  might 
expect  all  their  shades;  and  expressed  her  gratitude  to 
Mr.  Jones  for  undertaking  the  care  of  her  letter,  and 
giving  her  an  opportunity  of  assuring  Franklin  how  much 
she  did  and  ever  should  continue  to  love  him. 

Catherine  Ray  was  not  far  wrong  when  she  spoke  of 
Franklin  as  a  conjurer.  Catherine  Shipley's  letter  to 
him,  after  she  had    parted  with    him  at  Southampton, 


Franklin's  British  Friends  417 

though  without  the  romantic  flush  of  these  two  letters, 
spoke  the  same  general  language  of  deep-seated  affection. 
She  was  quite  provoked  with  herself,  she  said,  when 
she  got  to  Southampton  that  she  had  not  thought  of 
something,  such  as  a  pincushion,  to  leave  with  him,  that 
might  have  been  useful  to  him  during  the  voyage  to  remind 
him  of  her.  "Did  you  ever  taste  the  ginger  cake,"  she 
asked,  "and  think  it  had  belonged  to  your  fellow-traveller? 
In  short,  I  want  some  excuse  for  asking  whether  you  ever 
think  about  me."  And  from  this  letter  it  appears  that 
he  had  a  place  in  the  hearts  of  Emily  and  Betsey  too. 
She  had  had  a  letter  from  Emily,  Catherine  further  said, 
the  night  after  she  got  home,  to  inquire  whether  his  stay 
at  Southampton  would  allow  time  for  her  coming  to  see 
him.  Betsey  regretted  much  that  she  had  lost  that  happi- 
ness, and  the  writer  had  written  to  dear  Georgiana  a 
long  account  of  him,  for  she  knew  every  circumstance 
would  be  interesting  to  her.  "Indeed,  my  dear  sir,"  the 
letter  ended,  "from  my  father  and  mother  down  to  their 
youngest  child,  we  all  respect  and  love  you."1 

When  Franklin  was  told  by  Georgiana  that  Sir  John 
Pringle  was  pinched  by  poverty,  and  looked  ill,  he  must 
have  been  sorely  distressed ;  for  Sir  John  he  once  described 
as  his  "steady,  good  friend."  A  pupil  of  Boerhaave,  a 
high  authority  upon  the  application  of  sanitary  science 
to  the  prevention  of  dysentery  and  hospital  fevers, 
physician  to  the  Queen,  and  President  of  the  Royal 
Society,  Dr.  Pringle  was  one  of  the  distinguished  men  of 
his  time.  What  churchmen  were  to  the  preservation  of 
classical  learning,  before  teaching  became  a  special 
calling,  physicians  were  to  general  scientific  knowledge 
before  science  became  such ;  and,  among  these  physicians, 
he   occupied  an  honorable   position.2     "His   speech  in 

x"Mrs.  Shipley  and  her  daughter  Kitty,  in  their  passion  for  you  rival 

Georgiana."     Letter  from  Jonathan  Shipley  to  Franklin,  Nov.  27,  1785. 

2  To  a  series  of  experiments,  conducted  by  Sir  John  Pringle,  we  owe 

VOL,  I—27 


418       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

giving  the  last  medal,  (of  the  Royal  Society)  on  the  subject 
of  the  discoveries  relating  to  the  air, "  Franklin  wrote  to 
Jan  Ingenhousz,  "did  him  great  honour."  He  was  quite 
unlike  the  courtiers  who  sought  to  convince  King  Canute 
that  he  could  stay  the  incoming  tide  by  his  command, 
as  George  III.  found  out  when  he  asked  him,  after  the 
outbreak  of  the  American  Revolution,  to  pronounce  an 
opinion  in  favor  of  the  substitution  of  blunt  for  pointed 
lightning  rods  on  Kew  Palace.  The  laws  of  nature,  Sir 
John  hinted,  were  not  changeable  at  royal  pleasure, 
but  positions  of  honor  and  profit  he  soon  learnt,  if  he  did 
not  know  it  before,  were;  for  he  fell  into  such  disfavor 
with  the  King  that  he  had  to  resign  as  President  of  the 
Royal  Society,  and  was  deprived  of  his  post  as  physician 
to  the  Queen.  The  circumstances  in  which  his  disgrace 
originated  leave  us  at  but  little  loss  to  understand  why 
the  King  should  have  become  such  a  dogged  partisan  of 
blunt  conductors.  Prior  to  the  Revolution,  Franklin 
had  been  consulted  by  the  British  Board  of  Ordnance 
as  to  the  best  means  of  protecting  the  arsenals  at  Purfleet 
from  lightning,  and,  after  he  had  visited  the  powder 
magazine  there,  the  Royal  Society,  too,  was  asked  by  the 
Board  for  its  opinion.  The  Society  accordingly  ap- 
pointed a  committee  of  learned  men,  including  Cavendish 
and  Franklin,  to  make  a  report  on  the  subject.  All  of 
the  committee  except  Benjamin  Wilson,  who  dissented, 
reported  in  favor  of  pointed  conductors  as  against  blunt 
ones,  and  Franklin,  the  inventor  of  pointed  lightning 
rods,  drew  up  the  report.  The  scientific  controversy 
that  followed  soon  assumed  a  political  character,  when 
Franklin  dropped  the  philosophical  task  of  snatching 
the  lightning  from  the  skies  for  the  rebellious  task  of 

our  knowledge  of  the  fact  that  mosquito  hawks  are  so  whimsically-  consti- 
tuted that  they  live  longer  with  their  heads  off  than  on.  One  of  these 
decapitated  moths  was  so  tenacious  of  his  existence  as  to  survive  for  174 
days. 


Franklin's  British  Friends  419 

snatching  the  sceptre  from  a  tyrant.  When  he  heard 
that  George  III.  was,  like  Ajax,  obstinate  enough  to  defy 
even  the  lightning,  he  wrote  to  an  unknown  correspondent : 

The  King's  changing  his  pointed  conductors  for  blunt  ones 
is,  therefore,  a  matter  of  small  importance  to  me.  If  I  had 
a  wish  about  it,  it  would  be  that  he  had  rejected  them  al- 
together as  ineffectual.  For  it  is  only  since  he  thought  him- 
self and  family  safe  from  the  thunder  of  Heaven,  that  he 
dared  to  use  his  own  thunder  in  destroying  his  innocent 
subjects. 

Dr.  Ingenhousz,  however,  was  not  so  self-contained, 
and  made  such  an  angry  attack  on  Wilson  that  Franklin, 
who  invariably  relied  in  such  cases  upon  silence  and  the 
principle  that  Truth  is  a  cat  with  nine  lives  to  defend  him, 
laughingly  remarked,  "He  seems  as  much  heated  about 
this  one  point,  as  the  Jansenists  and  Molinists  were  about 
the  five."  As  for  King  George,  he  had  at  least  the  satis- 
faction of  realizing  that  his  people  still  had  a  ready  fund 
of  wit  for  timely  use.  One  homely  couplet  of  the  period, 
referring  to  Franklin's  famous  kite,  ran  in  this  way: 

"He  with  a  kite  drew  lightning  from  the  sky, 
And  like  a  kite  he  pecked  King  George's  eye." 

Another  more  polished  poet  penned  these  neat  lines: 

"While  you,  great  George,  for  knowledge  hunt, 
And  sharp  conductors  change  for  blunt, 
The  Empire's  out  of  joint. 
Franklin  another  course  pursues 
And  all  your  thunder  heedless  views 
By  keeping  to  the  point." 

If  we  may  believe  Franklin,  Sir  John  held  the  efficacy  of 
the  healing  art  in  very  moderate  esteem.  The  reader 
has  already  been  told  of  the  humorous  manner  in  which 


420       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

he  let  it  be  known  that,  in  his  opinion,  of  the  two  classes 
of  practitioners,  old  women  and  regular  physicians,  the 
former  had  done  the  most  to  save  the  honor  of  the  pro- 
fession. Franklin  also  informed  Dr.  Rush  that  Sir  John 
"once  told  him  92  fevers  out  of  100  cured  themselves,  4 
were  cured  by  Art,  and  4  proved  fatal. ' '  But  many  people 
must  have  had  a  more  favorable  opinion  of  the  professional 
value  of  Sir  John  than  Sir  John  himself  had,  for  his  "Con- 
versations" were  in  high  repute.  On  this  point,  there  is 
some  evidence  in  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  Dr.  Thomas 
Bond,  who  was  desirous  of  giving  his  son  Richard  the 
benefit  of  a  foreign  medical  education.  Referring  to  Sir 
John,  Franklin  wrote: 

Every  Wednesday  Evening  he  admits  young  Physicians  and 
Surgeons  to  a  Conversation  at  his  House,  which  is  thought 
very  improving  to  them.  I  will  endeavour  to  introduce  your 
Son  there  when  he  comes  to  London.  And  to  tell  you  frankly 
my  Opinion,  I  suspect  there  is  more  valuable  knowledge  in 
Physic  to  be  learnt  from  the  honest  candid  Observations  of  an 
old  Practitioner,  who  is  past  all  desire  of  more  Business,  having 
made  his  Fortune,  who  has  none  of  the  Professional  Interest  in 
keeping  up  a  Parade  of  Science  to  draw  Pupils,  and  who  by 
Experience  has  discovered  the  Inefficacy  of  most  Remedies  and 
Modes  of  Practice,  than  from  all  the  formal  Lectures  of  all  the 
Universities  upon  Earth. 

That  Dr.  John  cured  at  least  one  patient,  we  are  told 
by  Dr.  Rush  on  the  authority  of  Franklin,  but  it  was  Only 
himself  of  a  tremor,  and  that  by  simply  ceasing  to  take 
snuff.  Dr.  Pringle  and  himself,  Franklin  told  Dr.  Rush, 
observed  that  tremors  of  the  hands  were  more  frequent 
in  France  than  elsewhere,  and  probably  from  the  exces- 
sive use  of  snuff.  "He  concluded, "  says  Dr.  Rush,  "that 
there  was  no  great  advantage  in  using  tobacco  in  any  way, 
for  that  he  had  kept  company  with  persons  who  used  it  all 
his  life,  and  no  one  had  ever  advised  him  to  use  it.     The 


Franklin's  British  Friends  421 

Doctor  in  the  81st  year  of  his  age  declared  he  had  never 
snuffed,  chewed,  or  smoked." 

Among  the  persons  who  sought  Sir  John's  professional 
advice  was  Franklin  himself.  It  was  in  relation  to  a 
cutaneous  trouble  which  vexed  him  for  some  fourteen 
years,  and  broke  out  afresh  when  he  was  in  his  eighty- 
third  year.  But  the  best  medicine  that  Franklin  ever 
obtained  from  Sir  John  was  his  companionship  upon  two 
continental  tours,  one  of  which  was  inspired  by  the  latter's 
desire  to  drink  the  waters  at  Pyrmont,  and  the  other  by 
the  attractions  of  the  French  capital.  When  the  news 
of  Sir  John's  death  reached  Franklin  at  Passy  he  paid 
the  usual  heartfelt  tribute.  "We  have  lost  our  common 
Friend,"  he  wrote  to  Jan  Ingenhousz,  "the  excellent 
Pringle.  How  many  pleasing  hours  you  and  I  have 
pass'd  together  in  his  Company!" 

Another  English  physician,  for  whom  Franklin  enter- 
tained a  feeling  of  deep  affection,  was  the  Quaker  Dr.  John 
Fothergill.  After  the  death  of  this  friend,  in  a  letter  to 
Dr.  John  Coakley  Lettsom,  still  another  friend  of  his,  and 
one  of  the  famous  English  physicians  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  he  expressed  this  extraordinary  opinion  of  Dr. 
Fothergill's  worth:  "If  we  may  estimate  the  goodness 
of  a  man  by  his  disposition  to  do  good,  and  his  constant 
endeavours  and  success  in  doing  it,  I  can  hardly  conceive 
that  a  better  man  has  ever  existed."  No  faint  praise 
to  be  uttered  by  the  founder  of  the  Junto  and  one  who 
valued  above  all  things  the  character  of  a  doer  of  good ! 
Like  Sir  John  Pringle,  Dr.  Fothergill  belonged  to  the  class 
of  physicians  who  pursued  medicine,  as  if  it  were  a  mistress 
not  to  be  wooed  except  with  the  favor  of  the  other  members 
of  the  scientific  sisterhood.  He  was  an  ardent  botanist, 
and  his  collection  of  botanical  specimens  and  paintings  on 
vellum  of  rare  plants  was  among  the  remarkable  collec- 
tions of  his  age.  Two  of  his  correspondents  were  the 
Pennsylvania  botanists,  John  Bartram  and  Humphrey 


422        Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Marshall,  who  brought  to  his  knowledge  a  flora  in  many 
shining  instances  unknown  to  the  woods  and  fields  of  the 
Old  World.  His  medical  writings  were  held  in  high 
esteem,  and  were  published  after  his  death  under  the  edi- 
torial supervision  of  Dr.  Lettsom. 

As  a  practitioner,  he  was  eminently  successful,  and 
numbered  among  his  patients  many  representatives  of 
the  most  powerful  and  exclusive  circles  in  London.  What 
the  extent  of  his  practice  was  we  can  infer  from  a  question 
put  to  him  by  Franklin  in  1764. 

By  the  way  [he  asked],  when  do  you  intend  to  live? — i.  e.,  to 
enjoy  life.  When  will  you  retire  to  your  villa,  give  yourself 
repose,  delight  in  viewing  the  operations  of  nature  in  the 
vegetable  creation,  assist  her  in  her  works,  get  your  ingenious 
friends  at  times  about  you,  make  them  happy  with  your  con- 
versation, and  enjoy  theirs:  or,  if  alone,  amuse  yourself  with 
your  books  and  elegant  collections? 

To  be  hurried  about  perpetually  from  one  sick  chamber  to 
another  is  not  living.  Do  you  please  yourself  with  the  fancy 
that  you  are  doing  good  ?  You  are  mistaken.  Half  the  lives 
you  save  are  not  worth  saving,  as  being  useless,  and  almost  all 
the  other  half  ought  not  to  be  saved,  as  being  mischievous. 
Does  your  conscience  never  hint  to  you  the  impiety  of  being 
in  constant  warfare  against  the  plans  of  Providence  ?  Disease 
was  intended  as  the  punishment  of  intemperance,  sloth,  and 
other  vices,  and  the  example  of  that  punishment  was  intended 
to  promote  and  strengthen  the  opposite  virtues. 

All  of  which,  of  course,  except  the  suggestion  about 
retirement,  which  was  quite  in  keeping  with  Franklin's 
conception  of  a  rational  life,  was  nothing  more  than 
humorous  paradox  on  the  part  of  a  man  who  loved  all  his 
fellow-creatures  too  much  to  despair  of  any  of  them. 

When  Franklin  himself  was  seized  with  a  grave  attack 
of  illness  shortly  after  his  arrival  in  England  on  his  first 
mission,  Doctor  Fothergill  was  his  physician,  and  seems 


Franklin's  British  Friends  423 

to  have  cupped  and  physicked  him  with  drastic  assiduity. 
The  patient  was  not  a  very  docile  one,  for  he  wrote  to 
Deborah  that,  too  soon  thinking  himself  well,  he  ventured 
out  twice,  and  both  times  got  fresh  cold,  and  fell  down 
again;  and  that  his  "good  doctor"  grew  very  angry  with 
him  for  acting  contrary  to  his  cautions  and  directions,  and 
obliged  him  to  promise  more  observance  for  the  future. 
Always  to  Franklin  the  Doctor  remained  the  "good 
Doctor  Fothergill.,,  Even  in  a  codicil  to  his  will,  in 
bequeathing  to  one  of  his  friends  the  silver  cream  pot 
given  to  him  by  the  doctor,  with  the  motto  "Keep  bright 
the  chain, "  he  refers  to  him  by  that  designation. 
•  Nor  were  his  obligations  as  a  patient  the  only  obligations 
that  Franklin  owed  to  this  friend.  When  his  early  letters 
on  electricity  were  sent  over  to  England,  only  to  be 
laughed  at  in  the  first,  instance,  they  happened  to  pass 
under  the  eye  of  the  Doctor.  He  saw  their  merit,  ad- 
vised their  publication,  and  wrote  the  preface  to  the 
pamphlet  in  which  they  were  published  by  Cave.  But 
the  things  for  which  Franklin  valued  the  Doctor  most 
were  his  public  spirit  and  philanthropy.  He  was  well 
known  in  Philadelphia,  and,  when  Franklin  arrived  in 
London  in  1757,  he  was  actively  assisted  by  the  Doctor 
in  his  effort  to  secure  a  settlement  of  the  dispute  over 
taxation  between  the  Pennsylvania  Assembly  and  the 
Proprietaries.  Afterwards,  when  Franklin's  second  mis- 
sion to  England  was  coming  to  an  end,  the  Doctor  was 
drawn  deeply  into  a  vain  attempt  made  by  Lord  Howe 
and  his  sister  and  David  Barclay,  another  Quaker  friend 
of  Franklin,  to  compose  the  American  controversy  by  an 
agreement  with  Franklin.  For  this  business,  among 
other  reasons,  because  of  "his  daily  Visits  among  the 
Great,  in  the  Practice  of  his  Profession, "  of  which  Frank- 
lin speaks  in  his  history  of  these  negotiations,  he  would 
have  been  a  most  helpful  ally;  if  the  quarrel  had  not 
become  so  embittered.     But,  as  it  was,  the  knot,  which 


424       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

the  negotiators  were  striving  to  disentangle,  was  too 
intricate  for  anything  but  the  edge  of  the  sword.  When 
the  negotiations  came  to  nothing,  the  good  Doctor,  who 
knew  the  sentiments  of  "the  Great"  in  London  at  that 
time,  if  any  private  person  did,  had  no  advice  to  give  to 
Franklin  except,  when  he  returned  to  America,  to  get 
certain  of  the  Doctor's  friends  in  Philadelphia,  and  two 
or  three  other  persons  together,  and  to  inform  them  that, 
whatever  specious  pretences  were  offered  by  the  English 
ministry,  they  were  all  hollow,  and  that  to  obtain  a 
larger  field,  on  which  to  fatten  a  herd  of  worthless  para- 
sites, was  all  that  was  regarded.  It  was  a  bad  day, 
indeed,  for  England  when  one  of  the  best  men  in  the 
land  could  hold  such  language. 

The  silk  experiment  in  Pennsylvania  furnished  still 
another  congenial  field  for  the  co-operation  of  Franklin 
and  Doctor  Fothergill;  and,  in  a  letter  to  Franklin,  the 
latter  also  declared  in  startlingly  modern  terms  that, 
in  the  warmth  of  his  affection  for  mankind,  he  could  wish 
to  see  "the  institution  of  a  College  of  Justice,  where  the 
claims  of  sovereigns  should  be  weighed,  an  award  given, 
and  war  only  made  on  him  who  refused  submission." 

"Dr.  Fothergill,  who  was  among  the  best  men  I  have 
known,  and  a  great  promoter  of  useful  projects,"  is  the 
way  in  which  Franklin  alludes  to  the  Doctor  in  the  Auto- 
biography. He  then  states  in  the  same  connection  the 
plan  that  he  submitted  to  the  Doctor  for  "the  more 
effectual  cleaning  and  keeping  clean  the  streets  of  London 
and  Westminster";  but  this  plan,  though  not  unworthy 
of  the  public  zeal  and  ingenuity  of  its  author,  is  too 
embryonic,  when  contrasted  with  modern  municipal 
methods,  and  too  tamely  suggestive  of  the  broom  and 
dust-pan  of  ordinary  domestic  housekeeping,  to  deserve 
detailed  attention. 

Franklin  was  eminently  what  Dr.  Johnson  called  a 
"clubable"  man.     When  in  England,  he  often  dined  at 


Franklin's  British  Friends  425 

the  London  Coffee  House  in  Ludgate  Hill  with  the  group 
of  scientific  men  and  liberal  clergymen,  who  frequented 
the  place,  and  of  whom  he  spoke  on  one  occasion  as  "that 
excellent  Collection  of  good  Men,  the  Club  at  the  London." 
He  also  sometimes  dined  at  St.  Paul's  Coffee  House  and 
the  Dog  Tavern  on  Garlick  Hill,  and  with  the  Society  of 
Friends  to  the  Cause  of  Liberty  at  Paul's  Head  Tavern, 
Cateaton  Street,  where,  upon  every  4th  day  of  November, 
the  landing  of  King  William  and  the  Glorious  Revolu- 
tion were  enthusiastically  toasted.  When  he  ate  or 
drank  at  a  club,  he  liked  to  do  so  in  an  atmosphere 
of  free  thought  and  free  speech.  Religion,  spiced  with 
heresy,  and  Politics  flavored  with  liberalism,  were  the 
kinds  of  religion  and  politics  that  best  suited  his  predilec- 
tions. It  was  at  St.  Paul's  Coffee  House  that  he  became 
acquainted  with  Dr.  Richard  Price,  the  celebrated  clergy- 
man and  economist,  who  was  then  preaching  every 
Sunday  afternoon  at  Newington  Green,  where  Franklin 
advised  Sir  John  Pringle  to  go  to  hear  in  the  Doctor  a 
preacher  of  rational  Christianity.  It  is  probable  that 
Sir  John,  in  inquiring  of  Franklin  where  he  could  go  to 
hear  such  a  preacher,  was  moved  rather  by  curiosity  than 
piety;  for  Franklin  wrote  to  Dr.  Price:  "At  present 
I  believe  he  has  no  view  of  attending  constantly  any- 
where, but  now  and  then  only  as  it  may  suit  his 
convenience." 

The  acquaintance  between  Franklin  and  Doctor  Price, 
once  formed,  became  a  deeply-rooted  friendship,  and  on 
Franklin's  part  it  was  accompanied  by  a  degree  of  ad- 
miration for  the  Doctor's  abilities  which  hurried  him  on 
one  occasion  into  language  that  had  little  in  common 
with  the  sober  language  in  which  his  judgments  were 
usually  pronounced.  Of  Doctor  Price's  Appeal  to  the 
Public  on  the  Subject  of  the  National  Debt,  he  wrote  to  the 
author  in  the  most  enthusiastic  terms,  "it  being  in  my 
Opinion,"  he  said,   "considerg  the   profound   Study,  & 


426       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

steady  Application  of  Mind  that  the  Work  required,  & 
the  sound  Judgment  with  which  it  is  executed,  and  its 
great  and  important  Utility  to  the  Nation,  the  foremost 
Production  of  human  Understanding,  that  this  Century 
has  afforded  us."  And  to  Franklin  on  one  occasion  this 
friend  wrote  that  he  considered  his  friendship  one  of  the 
honors  and  blessings  of  his  life. 

When  the  American  controversy  arose,  Dr.  Price 
zealously  espoused  the  cause  of  the  Colonies,  and  this 
still  further  strengthened  the  friendship  between  the 
two.  For  his  Observations  on  Civil  Liberty  and  the  Jus- 
tice and  Policy  of  the  War  with  America,  the  City  of 
London  presented  him  with  the  freedom  of  the  city  in  a 
gold  box  of  fifty  pounds  value;  and  so  outspoken  was  he 
in  the  expression  of  his  political  convictions  that  Franklin 
wrote  to  John  Winthrop  in  1777  that  "his  Friends,  on 
his  Ace*,  were  under  some  Apprehensions  from  the  Vio- 
lence of  Government,  in  consequence  of  his  late  excellent 
Publications  in  favour  of  Liberty."  Indeed,  so  near 
was  he  to  making  the  American  cause  absolutely  his  own 
that  Congress,  while  the  American  War  was  still  raging, 
even  invited  him  to  become  an  American  citizen  and  to 
assist  in  regulating  the  American  finances,  but  that 
was  one  step  further  than  he  was  willing  to  go.  In  a 
letter  to  Joseph  Priestley,  shortly  after  the  Battle  of 
Bunker's  Hill,  Franklin  makes  an  amusing  allusion  to 
the  mathematical  genius  of  Dr.  Price  which  was  equal  to 
the  abstrusest  problems  involved  in  the  calculation  of 
annuities. 

Britain  [he  said],  at  the  expense  of  three  millions,  has 
killed  one  hundred  and  fifty  Yankees  this  campaign,  which  is 
twenty  thousand  pounds  a  head;  and  at  Bunker's  Hill  she 
gained  a  mile  of  ground,  half  of  which  she  lost  again  by  our 
taking  post  on  Ploughed  Hill.  During  the  same  time  sixty 
thousand  children  have  been  born  in  America.  From  these 
data  his  (Dr.  Price's)  mathematical  head  will  easily  calculate 


Franklin's  British  Friends  427 

the  time  and  expense  necessary  to  kill  us  all,  and  conquer  our 
whole  territory. 

Always  in  the  American  controversy,  Franklin  relied 
upon  the  loins  as  well  as  the  hands  of  the  Colonists  for 
the  final  victory. 

While  mentioning  Priestley,  we  might  recall  the  com- 
pliment in  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  Dr.  Price,  in  which 
the  former  brought  the  names  of  Priestley  and  Price 
into  a  highly  honorable  conjunction.  Speaking  of  dis- 
sensions in  the  Royal  Society,  he  said,  "Disputes  even  on 
small  Matters  often  produce  Quarrels  for  want  of  knowing 
how  to  differ  decently;  an  Art  which  it  is  said  scarce  any- 
body possesses  but  yourself  and  Dr.  Priestley."  Dr.  Price 
was  one  of  the  habitues  of  the  London  Coffee  House,  and, 
in  Franklin's  letters  to  him  from  Passy,  there  are  repeated 
references  to  the  happy  hours  that  the  writer  had  spent 
there.  ' '  I  never  think  of  the  Hours  I  so  happily  spent  in 
that  Company, "  he  said  in  one  letter,  "without  regretting 
that  they  are  never  to  be  repeated :  For  I  see  no  Prospect 
of  an  End  to  the  unhappy  War  in  my  Time."  In  another 
letter,  he  concluded  with  a  heartfelt  wish  that  he  might 
embrace  Dr.  Price  once  more,  and  enjoy  his  sweet  society 
in  peace  among  his  honest,  worthy,  ingenious  friends  at 
the  London.  In  another  letter,  after  peace  was  assured, 
he  said  that  he  longed  to  see  and  be  merry  with  the  Club, 
and,  in  a  still  later  letter,  he  told  Dr.  Price  that  he  might 
"pop  "  in  some  Thursday  evening  when  they  least  expected 
him.  In  enclosing,  on  one  occasion,  to  Dr.  Price  a  copy 
of  his  Rabelaisian  jeu  oV esprit  on  "Perfumes,"  which  was 
intended  also  for  the  eye  of  Priestley,  Franklin  cracks  an 
obscene  joke  at  the  expense  of  Priestley's  famous  re- 
searches with  regard  to  gases,  but,  when  Dr.  Price  states 
in  his  reply,  "We  have  been  entertained  with  the  pleasan- 
try of  it,  and  the  ridicule  it  contains, "  we  are  again  re- 
minded that  the  eighteenth  century  was  not  the  twentieth. 


428       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Dr.  Price  was  one  of  the  correspondents  to  whom 
Franklin  expounded  his  theory  that  England's  only 
chance  for  self-reformation  was  to  render  all  places 
unprofitable  and  the  King  too  poor  to  give  bribes  and 
pensions. 

Till  this  is  done  [he  said],  which  can  only  be  by  a  Revolution 
(and  I  think  you  have  not  Virtue  enough  left  to  procure  one), 
your  Nation  will  always  be  plundered,  and  obliged  to  pay 
by  Taxes  the  Plunderers  for  Plundering  and  Ruining.  Liberty 
and  Virtue  therefore  join  in  the  call,  COME  OUT  OF  HER, 
MY  PEOPLE! 

In  a  later  letter,  he  returns  to  the  same  subject  in 
these  words  so  pregnant  with  meaning  for  a  student  of  the 
political  conditions  which  palsied  the  influence  of  Chatham 
and  Burke  in  their  effort  to  avert  the  American  War : 

As  it  seems  to  be  a  settled  Point  at  present,  that  the  Minister 
must  govern  the  Parliament,  who  are  to  do  everything  he 
would  have  done;  and  he  is  to  bribe  them  to  do  this,  and  the 
People  are  to  furnish  the  Money  to  pay  these  Bribes;  the 
Parliament  appears  to  me  a  very  expensive  Machine  for 
Government,  and  I  apprehend  the  People  will  find  out  in 
time,  that  they  may  as  well  be  governed,  and  that  it  will  be 
much  cheaper  to  be  governed,  by  the  Minister  alone;  no 
Parliament  being  preferable  to  the  present. 

There  are  also  some  thoughtful  observations  in  one 
of  Franklin's  letters  to  Dr.  Price  on  the  limited  influence 
of  Roman  and  Grecian  oratory,  as  compared  with  the 
influence  of  the  modern  newspaper.  "We  now  find," 
he  observed,  "that  it  is  not  only  right  to  strike  while  the 
iron  is  hot,  but  that  it  may  be  very  practicable  to  heat  it 
by  continually  striking." 

His  last  letter  to  Dr.  Price  was  written  less  than  a  year 
before  his  own  death.     It  refers  to  the  death  of  the  Bishop 


Franklin's  British  Friends  429 

of  St.  Asaph's,  and  once  more  there  is  a  mournful  sigh 
from  the  Tree  of  Existence. 

My  Friends  drop  off  one  after  another,  when  my  Age  and 
Infirmities  prevent  my  making  new  Ones  [he  groaned],  & 
if  I  still  retained  the  necessary  Activity  and  Ability,  I  hardly 
see  among  the  existing  Generation  where  I  could  make  them 
of  equal  Goodness:  So  that  the  longer  I  live  I  must  expect 
to  be  very  wretched.  As  we  draw  nearer  the  Conclusion  of 
Life,  Nature  furnishes  with  more  Helps  to  wean  us  from  it, 
among  which  one  of  the  most  powerful  is  the  Loss  of  such 
dear  Friends. 

With  Dr.  Joseph  Priestley,  the  famous  clergyman  and 
natural  philosopher,  Franklin  was  very  intimate.  The 
discoveries  of  Priestley,  especially  his  discovery  that 
carbonic  acid  gas  is  imbibed  by  vegetation,  awakened 
Franklin's  keenest  interest,  and,  some  years  before 
Priestley  actually  received  a  medal  from  the  Royal  Society 
for  his  scientific  achievements,  Franklin  earnestly,  though 
vainly,  endeavored  to  obtain  one  for  him.  "I  find  that 
you  have  set  all  the  Philosophers  of  Europe  at  Work 
upon  Fix'd  Air, "  he  said  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Priestley, 
"and  it  is  with  great  Pleasure  I  observe  how  high  you 
stand  in  their  Opinion;  for  I  enjoy  my  Friend's  fame  as 
my  own."  And  no  one  who  knows  his  freedom  from  all 
petty,  carking  feelings  of  every  sort,  such  as  envy  and 
jealousy,  can  doubt  for  a  moment  that  he  did.  For  a 
time,  fixed  air  aroused  so  much  speculation  that  it  was 
thought  that  it  might  even  be  a  remedy  for  putrid  fevers 
and  cancers.  The  absorption  of  carbonic  acid  gas  by 
vegetation  is  all  simple  enough  now,  but  it  was  not  so 
simple  when  Priestley  wrote  to  Franklin  that  he  had 
discovered  that  even  aquatic  plants  imbibe  pure  air,  and 
emit  it  as  excrementitious  to  them,  in  a  dephlogisticated 
state.  On  one  occasion,  Franklin  paid  his  fellow-phi- 
losopher the  compliment  of  saying  that  he  knew  of  no 


430       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

philosopher  who  started   so  much  good   game  for  the 
hunters  after  knowledge  as  he  did. 

For  a  time  Priestley  enjoyed  the  patronage  of  Lord 
Shelburne,  who,  desirous  of  having  the  company  of  a  man 
of  general  learning  to  read  with  him,  and  superintend  the 
education  of  his  children,  took  Priestley  from  his  con- 
gregation at  Leeds,  settled  three  hundred  pounds  a  year 
upon  him  for  ten  years,  and  two  hundred  pounds  for 
life,  with  a  house  to  live  in  near  his  country  seat.  So 
Franklin  stated  in  a  letter  to  John  Winthrop,  when  Priest- 
ley was  engaged  in  the  task  of  putting  Lord  Shelburne' s 
great  library  into  order.  Subsequently  patron  and  client 
separated  amicably,  but,  before  they  did,  Priestley  con- 
sulted Franklin  as  to  whether  he  should  go  on  with  the 
arrangement.  The  latter  in  a  few  judicious  sentences 
counselled  him  to  do  so  until  the  end  of  the  term  of  ten 
years,  and,  by  way  of  illustrating  the  frequent  and 
troublesome  changes,  that  human  beings  make  without 
amendment,  and  often  for  the  worse,  told  this  story  of  his 
youth: 

In  my  Youth,  I  was  a  Passenger  in  a  little  Sloop,  descending 
the  River  Delaware.  There  being  no  Wind,  we  were  obliged, 
when  the  Ebb  was  spent,  to  cast  anchor,  and  wait  for  the  next. 
The  Heat  of  the  Sun  on  the  Vessel  was  excessive,  the  Company 
Strangers  to  me,  and  not  very  agreeable.  Near  the  river 
Side  I  saw  what  I  took  to  be  a  pleasant  green  Meadow,  in  the 
middle  of  which  was  a  large  shady  Tree,  where  it  struck  my 
Fancy  I  could  sit  and  read,  (having  a  Book  in  my  Pocket,) 
and  pass  the  time  agreeably  till  the  tide  turned.  I  therefore 
prevail'd  with  the  Captain  to  put  me  ashore.  Being  landed, 
I  found  the  greatest  part  of  my  Meadow  was  really  a  Marsh, 
in  crossing  which,  to  come  at  my  Tree,  I  was  up  to  my  knees 
in  Mire;  and  I  had  not  placed  myself  under  its  Shade  five 
Minutes,  before  the  Muskitoes  in  Swarms  found  me  out, 
attack'd  my  Legs,  Hands,  and  Face,  and  made  my  Reading 
and  my  Rest  impossible ;  so  that  I  return'd  to  the  Beach,  and 


Franklin's  British  Friends  431 

call'd  for  the  Boat  to  come  and  take  me  aboard  again,  where 
I  was  oblig'd  to  bear  the  Heat  I  had  strove  to  quit,  and  also 
the  Laugh  of  the  Company.  Similar  Cases  in  the  Affairs  of 
Life  have  since  frequently  fallen  under  my  Observation. 

Deterrent  as  was  the  advice,  pointed  by  such  a  graphic 
story,  Priestley  did  not  take  it,  and,  fortunately  for  him, 
the  pleasant  green  meadow  and  large  shady  tree  to  which 
he  retired  did  not  prove  such  a  deceptive  mirage.  After 
the  separation,  Lord  Shelburne  endeavored  to  induce  him 
to  renew  their  former  relation,  but  he  declined. 

Priestley  was  one  of  the  witnesses  of  thebaiting,to  which 
Franklin  was  subjected  at  the  Cockpit,  on  account  of  the 
Hutchinson  letters,  on  the  famous  occasion,  of  which 
it  could  be  well  said  by  every  thoughtful  Englishman  a 
little  later  in  the  words  of  the  ballad  of  Chevy-Chase, 

"The  child  may  rue  that  is  unborne 
The  hunting  of  that  day." 

Or  "the  speaking"  of  that  day,  as  Lord  Campbell  has 
parodied  the  lines. 

Priestley  was  also  among  those  eye-witnesses  of  the 
scene,  who  testified  to  the  absolutely  impassive  counte- 
nance with  which  Franklin  bore  the  ordeal.  As  he  left 
the  room,  however,  he  pressed  Priestley's  hand  in  a  way 
that  indicated  much  feeling.  The  next  day,  they  break- 
fasted together,  and  Franklin  told  Priestley  "that,  if  he 
had  not  considered  the  thing  for  which  he  had  been 
so  much  insulted,  as  one  of  the  best  actions  of  his  life,  and 
what  he  should  certainly  do  again  in  the  same  circum- 
stances, he  could  not  have  supported  it." 

To  Priestley  also  the  world  was  first  indebted  for 
knowledge  of  the  fact  that,  when  Franklin  afterwards 
came  to  sign  in  France  the  Treaty  of  Alliance  between  that 
country  and  the  United  States,  he  took  pains  to  wear  the 


432       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

same  suit  of  spotted  Manchester  velvet  that  he  wore  when 
he  was  treated  with  such  indecency  at  the  Cockpit. 

From  France  Franklin  wrote  to  Priestley  aletter  express- 
ing the  horror — for  no  other  term  is  strong  enough  to 
describe  the  sentiment — in  which  he  held  the  unnatural 
war  between  Great  Britain  and  her  revolted  Colonies. 

The  Hint  you  gave  me  jocularly  [he  said],  that  you  did  not 
quite  despair  of  the  Philosopher's  Stone,  draws  from  me  a 
Request,  that,  when  you  have  found  it,  you  will  take  care  to 
lose  it  again ;  for  I  believe  in  my  conscience,  that  Mankind  are 
wicked  enough  to  continue  slaughtering  one  another  as  long 
as  they  can  find  Money  to  pay  the  Butchers.  But,  of  all  the 
Wars  in  my  time,  this  on  the  part  of  England  appears  to  me 
the  wickedest;  having  no  Cause  but  Malice  against  Liberty, 
and  the  Jealousy  of  Commerce.  And  I  think  the  Crime  seems 
likely  to  meet  with  its  proper  Punishment;  a  total  loss  of  her 
own  Liberty,  and  the  Destruction  of  her  own  Commerce. 

But  Franklin  was  not  too  incensed  to  have  his  joke 
in  this  same  letter  over  even  such  a  grim  subject  for  merri- 
ment as  powder.  "When  I  was  at  the  camp  before 
Boston,"  he  declared,  "the  Army  had  not  5  Rounds  of 
Powder  a  Man.  This  was  kept  a  Secret  even  from  our 
People.  The  World  wonder'd  that  we  so  seldom  fir'd  a 
Cannon;  we  could  not  afford  it." 

Another  English  friend  of  Franklin  was  Benjamin 
Vaughan,  the  son  of  a  West  Indian  planter,  and  at  one 
time  the  private  secretary  of  Lord  Shelburne.  His  family 
was  connected  with  the  House  of  Bedford,  and  his  wife, 
Sarah  Manning,  was  an  aunt  of  the  late  Cardinal  Manning. 
To  Vaughan  the  reputation  of  Franklin  is  doubly  indebted. 
In  1779,  ne  brought  out  a  new  edition  of  Franklin's 
writings,  and  it  was  partly  the  entreaties  of  Abel  James 
and  himself  which  induced  Franklin  to  continue  the 
Autobiography,  after  work  on  it  had  been  long  suspended 
by  its  author  because  of  the  demands  of  the  Revolution 


Franklin's  British  Friends  433 

on  his  time.  The  spirit,  in  which  the  edition  of  Franklin's 
writings  was  prepared,  found  expression  in  the  preface. 
"Can  Englishmen,"  Vaughan  asked,  "read  these  things 
and  not  sigh  at  reflecting  that  the  country  which  could 
produce  their  author,  was  once  without  controversy 
their  own!" 

Before  Franklin  left  France  he  longed  to  pay  another 
visit  to  England,  and  this  matter  is  touched  upon  in 
a  letter  to  Vaughan  which  sheds  a  sidelight  upon  the 
intimacy  which  existed  between  the  two  men. 

By  my  doubts  of  the  propriety  of  my  going  soon  to  London, 
[he  said],  I  meant  no  reflection  on  my  friends  or  yours.  If 
I  had  any  call  there  besides  the  pleasure  of  seeing  those  whom 
I  love,  I  should  have  no  doubts.  If  I  live  to  arrive  there, 
I  shall  certainly  embrace  your  kind  invitation,  and  take 
up  my  abode  with  you. 

Some  of  the  sagest  observations  ever  made  by  Franklin 
are  found  in  his  letters  to  Vaughan,  and  several  of  his 
happy  stories.  The  following  reflections,  prompted  by 
English  restraints  upon  commerce,  were  not  intended  to 
be  taken  literally,  but  they  contain  profound  insight 
enough  to  merit  transcription. 

It  is  wonderful  how  preposterously  the  affairs  of  this  world 
are  managed.  Naturally  one  would  imagine,  that  the  interest 
of  a  few  individuals  should  give  way  to  general  interest;  but 
individuals  manage  their  affairs  with  so  much  more  applica- 
tion, industry,  and  address,  than  the  public  do  theirs,  that 
general  interest  most  commonly  gives  way  to  particular. 
We  assemble  parliaments  and  councils,  to  have  the  benefit  of 
their  collected  wisdom,  but  we  necessarily  have,  at  the  same 
time,  the  inconvenience  of  their  collected  passions,  prejudices, 
and  private  interests.  By  the  help  of  these,  artful  men 
overpower  their  wisdom,  and  dupe  its  possessors;  and  if  we 
may  judge  by  the  acts,  arrets,  and  edicts,  all  the  world  over,  for 

VOL.    1—28 


434      Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

regulating  commerce,  an  assembly  of  great  men  is  the  greatest 
fool  upon  earth. 

When  Franklin  sat  down  to  write  this  letter,  Vaughan 
had  asked  him  what  remedy  he  had  for  the  growing  luxury 
of  his  country  which  gave  so  much  offence  to  all  English 
travellers  without  exception.  In  replying  to  this  rather 
tactless  question,  Franklin's  pen  ran  on  until  he  had 
completed  not  so  much  a  letter  as  an  economic  essay. 

Our  People  [he  begins]  are  hospitable,  and  have  indeed  too 
much  Pride  in  displaying  upon  their  Tables  before  Strangers 
the  Plenty  and  Variety  that  our  Country  affords.  They  have 
the  Vanity,  too,  of  sometimes  borrowing  one  another's  Plate 
to  entertain  more  splendidly.  Strangers  being  invited  from 
House  to  House,  and  meeting  every  Day  with  a  Feast,  imagine 
what  they  see  is  the  ordinary  Way  of  living  of  all  the  Families 
where  they  dine;  when  perhaps  each  Family  lives  a  Week 
after  upon  the  Remains  of  the  Dinner  given.  It  is,  I  own,  a 
Folly  in  our  People  to  give  such  Offence  to  English  Travellers. 
The  first  part  of  the  Proverb  is  thereby  verified,  that  Fools 
make  Feasts.  I  wish  in  this  Case  the  other  were  as  true, 
and  Wise  Men  eat  them.  These  Travellers  might,  one  would 
think,  find  some  Fault  they  could  more  decently  reproach  us 
with,  than  that  of  our  excessive  Civility  to  them  as  Strangers. 

With  this  introduction,  he  proceeds  to  say  a  good  word 
for  luxury.  "Is  not  the  Hope  of  one  day  being  able  to 
purchase  and  enjoy  Luxuries  a  great  Spur  to  Labour  and 
Industry?"  he  asked.  And  this  question  brought  up 
one  of  the  inevitable  stories. 

The  Skipper  of  a  Shallop,  employed  between  Cape  May  and 
Philadelphia,  had  done  us  some  small  Service,  for  which  he 
refused  Pay.  My  Wife,  understanding  that  he  had  a  Daughter 
sent  her  as  a  Present  a  new-fashioned  Cap.  Three  Years 
After,  this  Skipper  being  at  my  House  with  an  old  Farmer  of 
Cape  May,  his  Passenger,  he  mentioned  the  Cap,  and  how 


Franklin's  British  Friends  435 

much  his  Daughter  had  been  pleased  with  it.  "But,"  says 
he,  "it  proved  a  dear  Cap  to  our  Congregation."  "How  so?" 
"When  my  Daughter  appeared  in  it  at  Meeting,  it  was  so 
much  admired,  that  all  the  Girls  resolved  to  get  such  Caps 
from  Philadelphia,  and  my  Wife  and  I  computed,  that  the 
whole  could  not  have  cost  less  than  a  hundred  Pound." 
"True,"  says  the  Farmer,  "but  you  do  not  tell  all  the  Story. 
I  think  the  Cap  was  nevertheless  an  Advantage  to  us,  for  it 
was  the  first  thing  that  put  our  Girls  upon  Knitting  worsted 
Mittens  for  Sale  at  Philadelphia,  that  they  might  have  where- 
withal to  buy  Caps  and  Ribbands  there,  and  you  know  that 
that  Industry  has  continued,  and  is  likely  to  continue  and 
increase  to  a  much  greater  Value,  and  answer  better  Purposes." 
Upon  the  whole,  I  was  more  reconciled  to  this  little  Piece  of 
Luxury,  since  not  only  the  Girls  were  made  happier  by  having 
fine  Caps,  but  the  Philadelphians  by  the  Supply  of  warm 
Mittens. 

Then  he  argues  still  further  as  follows  that  luxury  may 
not  always  be  such  an  evil  as  it  seems: 

A  Shilling  spent  idly  by  a  Fool,  may  be  picked  up  by  a 
Wiser  Person,  who  knows  better  what  to  do  with  it.  It  is 
therefore  not  lost.  A  vain,  silly  Fellow  builds  a  fine  House, 
furnishes  it  richly,  lives  in  it  expensively,  and  in  few  years 
ruins  himself;  but  the  Masons,  Carpenters,  Smiths,  and  other 
honest  Tradesmen  have  been  by  his  Employ  assisted  in  main- 
taining and  raising  their  Families;  the  Farmer  has  been  paid 
for  his  labour,  and  encouraged,  and  the  Estate  is  now  in 
better  Hands. 

There  were  exceptional  cases,  of  course.  "If  there  be 
a  Nation,  for  Instance,  that  exports  its  Beef  and  Linnen, 
to  pay  for  its  Importation  of  Claret  and  Porter,  while  a 
great  Part  of  its  People  live  upon  Potatoes,  and  wear  no 
Shirts,  wherein  does  it  differ  from  the  Sot,  who  lets  his 
Family  starve,  and  sells  his  Clothes  to  buy  Drink. "  He 
meant  Ireland,  it  is  needless  to  add.     A  little  in  this 


436       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

way,  he  confessed,  was  the  exchange  of  American  victuals 
for  West  Indian  rum  and  sugar. 

The  existence  of  so  much  want  and  misery  in  the  world, 
he  thought,  was  due  to  the  employment  of  men  and 
women  in  works  that  produce  neither  the  necessaries  nor 
the  conveniences  of  life.  Such  people,  aided  by  those  who 
do  nothing,  consume  the  necessaries  raised  by  the  labori- 
ous. This  idea,  he  developed  with  his  inborn  lucidity, 
ending,  however,  of  course,  with  the  reflection  that  we 
should  naturally  expect  from  a  man,  who  was  so  thoroughly 
in  touch  with  his  kind,  that,  upon  the  whole,  the  quantity 
of  industry  and  prudence  among  mankind  exceeded  the 
quantity  of  idleness  and  folly. 

This  "long,  rambling  Letter"  he  called  it — this  "brief, 
pointed  and  masterly  letter,' '  we  term  it — concludes 
quite  in  the  style  of  one  of  Poor  Richard's  dissertations: 

Almost  all  the  Parts  of  our  Bodies  require  some  Expence. 
The  Feet  demand  Shoes;  the  Legs,  Stockings;  the  rest  of  the 
Body,  Clothing;  and  the  Belly,  a  good  deal  of  Victuals.  Our 
Eyes,  tho'  exceedingly  useful,  ask,  when  reasonable,  only  the 
cheap  Assistance  of  Spectacles,  which  could  not  much  impair 
our  Finances.  But  the  Eyes  of  other  People  are  the  Eyes  that 
ruin  us.  If  all  but  myself  were  blind,  I  should  want  neither 
fine  Clothes,  fine  Houses,  nor  fine  Furniture. 

Another  letter  to  Vaughan  is  really  an  essay  on  the 
Criminal  Laws  and  the  practice  of  privateering.  And 
a  wise,  humane  and  sprightly  essay  it  is,  fully  worthy  of  a 
man,  who  was  entirely  too  far  in  advance  of  his  age  to 
approve  the  savage  English  laws,  which  hanged  a  thief 
for  stealing  a  horse,  and  had  no  better  answer  to  make  to 
the  culprit,  when  he  pleaded  that  it  was  hard  to  hang 
a  man  for  only  stealing  a  horse,  than  the  reply  of  Judge 
Burnet:  "Man,  thou  art  not  to  be  hanged  only  for 
stealing,  but  that  horses  may  not  be  stolen."  Not 
unworthy  either  was  this  essay  of  a  man  whose  benevo- 


Franklin's  British  Friends  437 

lence  was  too  clear-sighted  and  generous  to  be  cheated 
by  the  pretence  that  the  practice  of  privateering  has  its 
root  in  anything  better  than  the  rapacity  of  the  high- 
wayman. A  highwayman,  he  said,  was  as  much  a  robber, 
when  he  plundered  in  a  gang,  as  when  single;  and  a  nation, 
that  made  an  unjust  war,  was  only  a  great  gang.  How 
could  England,  which  had  commissioned  no  less  than 
seven  hundred  gangs  of  privateering  robbers,  he  asked, 
have  the  face  to  condemn  the  crime  of  robbery  in  in- 
dividuals, and  hang  up  twenty  criminals  in  a  morning. 
It  naturally  put  one  in  mind  of  a  Newgate  anecdote. 
"One  of  the  Prisoners  complain'd,  that  in  the  Night 
somebody  had  taken  his  Buckles  out  of  his  Shoes;  'What, 
the  Devil!'  says  another,  'have  we  then  Thieves  among 
us?  It  must  not  be  suffered,  let  us  search  out  the  Rogue, 
and  pump  him  to  death." 

Vaughan  was  a  prolix  correspondent,  and  in  reading 
his  letters  we  cannot  but  be  reminded  at  times  of  the 
question  put  to  him  by  Franklin,  when  inveighing  against 
the  artifices  adopted  by  booksellers  for  the  purpose  of 
padding  books.  After  remarking  that  they  were  puffed 
up  to  such  an  extent  that  the  selling  of  paper  seemed  the 
object,  and  printing  on  it,  only  the  pretence,  he  said, 
"You  have  a  law,  I  think,  against  butchers  blowing  of 
veal  to  make  it  look  fatter;  why  not  one  against  book- 
sellers' blowing  of  books  to  make  them  look  bigger." 

Vaughan  was  among  the  friends  who  did  not  fail  to 
hasten  to  Southampton  when  Franklin  touched  there 
on  his  return  from  France  to  America. 

.  In  what  affectionate  esteem  Franklin  held  his  two  Eng- 
lish friends,  Dr.  John  Hawkesworth,  the  author  and 
writer  of  oratorios,  and  John  Stanley,  the  blind  musician 
and  organist  of  the  Society  of  the  Inner  Temple,  we  have 
already  seen.  Stanley  composed  the  music  for  Dr. 
Hawkesworth's  oratorios  Zimri  and  The  Fall  of  Egypt, 
and  like  music  and  words  the  two  friends  themselves  were 


438       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

blended  in  the  mind  of  Franklin.  Writing  in  the  latter 
years  of  his  life  to  another  English  friend  of  his,  Thomas 
Jordan,  the  brewer,  who  had  recently  sent  him  a  cask  of 
porter,  he  had  this  to  say  about  them,  in  connection  with 
the  two  satellites  of  Georgium  Sidus,  which  Herschel  had 
just  discovered. 

Let  us  hope,  my  friend,  that,  when  free  from  these  bodily 
embarrassments,  we  may  roam  together  through  some  of 
the  systems  he  has  explored,  conducted  by  some  of  our  old 
companions  already  acquainted  with  them.  Hawkesworth 
will  enliven  our  progress  with  his  cheerful,  sensible  converse, 
and  Stanley  accompany  the  music  of  the  spheres. 

Several  times,  in  his  letter,  Franklin  refers  to  Hawkes- 
worth as  the  "good  Doctor  Hawkesworth,"  and  it  was 
from  him  that  he  learned  to  call  Strahan  "Straney." 

Another  English  friend  of  Franklin  was  John  Sargent, 
a  London  merchant,  a  director  of  the  Bank  of  England, 
and  a  member  of  Parliament.  The  friendship  was  shared 
by  Mrs.  Sargent,  "whom  I  love  very  much,"  Franklin 
said  in  one  of  his  letters  to  her  husband.  After  his  return 
from  his  second  mission  to  England,  he  wrote  to  Sargent, 
asking  him  to  receive  the  balance  due  him  by  Messrs. 
Browns  and  Collinson,  and  keep  it  for  him  or  his  children. 
"It  may  possibly,"  he  declared,  "soon  be  all  I  shall  have 
left :  as  my  American  Property  consists  chiefly  of  Houses 
in  our  Seaport  Towns,  which  your  Ministry  have  begun 
to  burn,  and  I  suppose  are  wicked  enough  to  burn  them 
all."  In  connection  with  Sargent,  it  may  also  be  men- 
tioned that  he  was  one  of  the  applicants  with  Franklin 
for  the  Ohio  grant,  and  that  it  was  at  his  country  seat  at 
Halstead,  in  Kent,  that  Lord  Stanhope  called  for  the 
purpose  of  taking  Franklin  to  Hayes,  the  country  seat  of 
Chatham,  where  Chatham  and  Franklin  met  for  the  first 
time. 

Another  English  friend  of  Franklin  was  John  Canton, 


Franklin's  British  Friends'  439 

who  was,  however,  rather  a  scientific  than  a  social  comrade, 
though  a  fellow-tourist  of  his  on  one  of  his  summer  excur- 
sions; and  still  another  was  Dr.  Alexander  Small,  for 
whom  he  cherished  a  feeling  of  real  personal  affection. 
In  one  letter  to  Small,  he  tells  him  that  he  had  found  relief 
from  the  gout  by  exposing  his  naked  foot,  when  he  was  in 
bed,  and  thereby  promoting  the  process  of  transpiration. 
He  gave  the  fact,  he  said,  to  Small,  in  exchange  for  his 
receipt  for  tartar  emetic,  because  the  commerce  of  phi- 
losophy as  well  as  other  commerce  was  best  promoted  by 
taking  care  to  make  returns.  In  another  letter  to  Small, 
there  is  a  growl  for  the  American  Loyalists. 

As  to  the  Refugees  [he  observed],  whom  you  think  we  were 
so  impolitic  in  rejecting,  I  do  not  find  that  they  are  miss'd 
here,  or  that  anybody  regrets  their  Absence.  And  certainly 
they  must  be  happier  where  they  are,  under  the  Government 
they  admire;  and  be  better  receiv'd  among  a  People,  whose 
Cause  they  espous'd  and  fought  for,  than  among  those  who 
cannot  so  soon  have  forgotten  the  Destruction  of  their  Habi- 
tations, and  the  spilt  Blood  of  their  dearest  Friends  and 
near  Relations. 

Then  there  is  a  reference  in  this  letter  to  the  learned 
and  ingenious  friends,  who  had  left  Dr.  Small  and  himself 
to  join  the  majority  in  the  world  of  spirits. 

Every  one  of  them  [he  said]  now  knows  more  than  all  of 
us  they  have  left  behind.  It  is  to  me  a  comfortable  Reflec- 
tion, that,  since  we  must  live  forever  in  a  future  State,  there  is 
a  sufficient  Stock  of  Amusement  in  reserve  for  us,  to  be  found 
in  constantly  learning  something  new  to  Eternity,  the  present 
Quantity  of  human  Ignorance  infinitely  exceeding  that  of 
human  Knowledge.  Adieu,  my  dear  Friend,  and  believe 
me,  in  whatever  World,  yours  most  affectionately. 

In  a  subsequent  letter,  there  is  a  softer  word  for  the 
Loyalists.     He   believed,   he  said,   that   fear  and   error 


440       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

rather  than  malice  occasioned  their  desertion  of  their 
country's  cause  and  the  adoption  of  the  King's.  The 
public  resentment  against  them  was  then  so  far  abated 
that  none,  who  asked  leave  to  return,  were  refused,  and 
many  of  them  then  lived  in  America  much  at  their  ease. 
But  he  thought  that  the  politicians,  who  were  a  sort  of 
people  that  loved  to  fortify  themselves  in  their  projects 
by  precedent,  were  perhaps  waiting,  before  they  ventured 
to  propose  the  restoration  of  the  confiscated  estates  of  the 
Loyalists,  to  see  whether  the  English  Government  would 
restore  the  forfeited  estates  in  Scotland  to  the  Scotch, 
those  in  Ireland  to  the  Irish  and  those  in  England  to  the 
Welsh!  He  was  glad  that  the  Loyalists,  who  had  not 
returned  to  America,  had  received,  or  were  likely  to 
receive,  some  compensation  for  their  losses  from  England, 
but  it  did  not  seem  so  clearly  consistent  with  the  wisdom 
of  Parliament  for  it  to  provide  such  compensation  on 
behalf  of  the  King,  who  had  seduced  these  Loyalists 
by  his  proclamations.  Some  mad  King,  in  the  future, 
might  set  up  such  action  on  the  part  of  Parliament  as  a 
precedent,  as  was  realized  by  the  Council  of  Brutes  in  the 
old  fable,  a  copy  of  which  he  enclosed.  The  fable,  of 
course,  was  not  an  old  fable  at  all,  but  one  of  his  own 
productions,  in  which  the  horse  with  the  "boldness  and 
freedom  that  became  the  nobleness  of  his  nature,"  suc- 
ceeded in  convincing  the  council  of  the  beasts,  against 
the  views  of  the  wolves  and  foxes,  that  the  lion  should 
bestow  no  reward  upon  the  mongrels,  who,  sprung  in 
part  from  wolves  and  foxes,  and  corrupted  by  royal 
promises  of  great  rewards,  had  deserted  the  honest  dogs, 
when  the  lion,  notwithstanding  the  attachment  of  these 
dogs  to  him,  had,  under  the  influence  of  evil  counsellors, 
contracted  an  aversion  to  them,  condemned  them  un- 
heard and  ordered  his  tigers,  leopards  and  panthers  to 
attack  and  destroy  them.  In  this  letter,  there  is  another 
reference  to  the  reformed  prayer-book  which  Dr.  Small 


Franklin's  British  Friends  441 

and  good  Mrs.  Baldwin  had  done  him  the  honor,  as  we 
have  seen,  to  approve.  The  things  of  this  world,  he  said, 
took  up  too  much  of  the  little  time  left  to  him  for  him  to 
undertake  anything  like  a  reformation  in  matters  of  reli- 
gion. When  we  can  sow  good  seed,  we  should,  however, 
do  it,  and  await  with  patience,  when  we  can  do  no  better, 
Nature's  time  for  their  sprouting. 

A  later  letter  assured  Dr.  Small  that  Franklin  still 
loved  England,  and  wished  it  prosperity,  but  it  had 
only  another  growl  for  the  Loyalists.  Someone  had 
said,  he  declared,  that  we  are  commanded  to  forgive  our 
enemies,  but  that  we  are  nowhere  commanded  to  forgive 
our  friends.  The  Loyalists,  after  uniting  with  the  savages 
for  the  purpose  of  burning  the  houses  of  the  American 
Whigs,  and  murdering  and  scalping  their  wives  and 
children,  had  left  them  for  the  Government  of  their 
King  in  England  and  Nova  Scotia.  "We  do  not  miss 
them,"  he  said,  "nor  wish  their  return;  nor  do  we  envy 
them  their  present  happiness."1 

This  letter  also  mildly  deprecates  the  honor  that  Small 
did  him  in  naming  him  with  Timoleon.  "I  am  like  him 
only  in  retiring  from  my  public  labours,"  he  declared, 
"which  indeed  my  stone,  and  other  infirmities  of  age, 
have  made  indispensably  necessary." 

The  enthusiasm  of  the  French  people  had  drawn  so 
freely  upon  the  heroes  of  antiquity  for  a  parallel  to  him 

'A  letter  from  Franklin  to  Francis  Maseres,  dated  Passy,  June  26, 
1785,  suggests  an  additional  reason  why  the  antipathy  of  the  American 
Whigs  to  the  American  loyalists  was  so  unrelenting.  "The  war  against 
us  was  begun  by  a  general  act  of  Parliament,  declaring  all  our  estates 
confiscated;  and  probably  one  great  motive  to  the  loyalty  of  the  royalists 
was  the  hope  of  sharing  in  these  confiscations.  They  have  played  a  deep 
game,  staking  their  estates  against  ours;  and  they  have  been  unsuccessful. 
But  it  is  a  surer  game,  since  they  had  promises  to  rely  on  from  your  govern- 
ment, of  indemnification  in  case  of  loss;  and  I  see  your  Parliament  is  about 
to  fulfil  those  Promises.  To  this  I  have  no  objection,  because,  though 
still  our  enemies,  they  are  men;  they  are  in  necessity;  and  I  think  even  a 
hired  assassin  has  a  right  to  his  pay  from  his  employer." 


442       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

that  Dr.  Small,  perhaps,  had  to  put  up  with  Timoleon 
in  default  of  a  better  classical  congener. 

Other  English  friends  of  Franklin  were  John  Alleyne, 
Edward  Bridgen,  Edmund  Burke,  Mrs.  Thompson, 
John  Whitehurst,  Anthony  Tissington,  Thomas  Viny  and 
Caleb  Whitefoord.  Our  attention  has  already  been 
called  to  his  pithy  reflections  on  early  marriages  in  one 
of  his  letters  to  John  Alleyne. 

Treat  your  Wife  [he  said,  in  the  concluding  sentences  of 
this  admirable  letter]  always  with  Respect;  it  will  procure 
Respect  to  you,  not  from  her  only  but  from  all  that  observe  it. 
Never  use  a  slighting  Expression  to  her,  even  in  jest,  for  Slights 
in  Jest,  after  frequent  bandy ings,  are  apt  to  end  in  angry 
earnest.  Be  studious  in  your  Profession,  and  you  will  be 
learned.  Be  industrious  and  frugal,  and  you  will  be  rich. 
Be  sober  and  temperate,  and  you  will  be  healthy.  Be  in 
general  virtuous,  and  you  will  be  happy.  At  least,  you  will, 
by  such  Conduct,  stand  the  best  Chance  for  such  Conse- 
quences. 

In  another  letter  to  Alleyne,  with  his  unerring  good 
sense,  he  makes  short  work  of  the  perverse  prejudice 
against  intermarriage  with  a  deceased  wife's  sister  which 
was  destined  to  die  so  hard  in  the  English  mind. 

To  Edward  Bridgen,  a  merchant  of  London,  Franklin 
referred  in  a  letter  to  Governor  Alexander  Martin  of 
North  Carolina  as  "a  particular  Friend  of  mine  and  a 
zealous  one  of  the  American  Cause."  The  object  of  the 
letter  was  to  reclaim  from  confiscation  property  in  that 
state  belonging  to  Bridgen.  And  it  was  to  Bridgen  that 
Franklin  made  the  suggestion  that,  instead  of  repeating 
continually  upon  every  half  penny  the  dull  story  that 
everybody  knew  (and  that  it  would  have  been  no  loss  to 
mankind  if  nobody  had  ever  known)  that  George  III. 
was  King  of  Great  Britain,  France  and  Ireland,  etc.,  etc., 
there  should  be  inscribed  on  the  coin  some  important 


Franklin's  British  Friends  443 

proverb  of  Solomon,  some  pious  moral,  prudential  or 
economical  precept,  calculated  to  leave  an  impression 
upon  the  mind,  especially  of  young  persons,  such  as  on 
some,  "The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  Wisdom" ; 
on  others,  "Honesty  is  the  best  Policy";  on  others,  "He 
that  by  the  plow  would  thrive,  himself  must  either  hold  or 
drive";  on  others,  "Keep  thy  Shop,  and  thy  Shop  will 
keep  thee";  on  others,  "A  penny  saved  is  a  penny  got"; 
on  others,  "He  that  buys  what  he  has  no  need  of,  will 
soon  be  forced  to  sell  his  necessaries";  and  on  others, 
"Early  to  bed  and  early  to  rise,  will  make  a  man  healthy, 
wealthy,  and  wise." 

With  Edmund  Burke  Franklin  does  not  appear  to  have 
been  intimate,  but  they  knew  each  other  well  enough  for 
the  former  in  a  letter  to  the  latter  to  term  the  friendship 
between  them  an  "old  friendship."  It  was  Burke  who 
remarked,  when  Franklin  was  examined  before  the  House 
of  Commons  on  American  affairs,  that  it  was  as  if  a  school- 
master was  being  catechized  by  his  pupils.  For  every 
reason,  the  judgment  of  so  great  a  man  about  such  an 
incident  has  its  value,  but  among  other  reasons  because 
Burke  was  accounted  one  of  the  best-informed  men  in 
England  in  relation  to  American  affairs. 

The  only  glimpse  we  obtain  of  Mrs.  Thompson  is  in  a 
letter  written  to  her  by  Franklin  from  Paris,  shortly 
after  his  arrival  in  France  in  1776,  but  the  raillery  of  this 
letter  is  too  familiar  in  tone  to  have  marked  the  course  of 
anything  but  real  intimacy. 

You  are  too  early,  Hussy  [he  wrote],  (as  well  as  too  saucy,) 
in  calling  me  Rebel;  you  should  wait  for  the  Event,  which 
will  determine  whether  it  is  a  Rebellion  or  only  a  Revolution. 
Here  the  Ladies  are  more  civil;  they  call  us  les  Insurgens,  sl 
Character  that  usually  pleases  them:  And  methinks  all 
other  Women  who  smart,  or  have  smarted,  under  the  Tyranny 
of  a  bad  Husband,  ought  to  be  fixed  in  Revolution  Principles, 
and  act  accordingly. 


444       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Then  Mrs.  Thompson  is  told  some  gossipy  details 
about  a  common  friend  whom  Franklin  had  seen  during 
the  preceding  spring  at  New  York,  and  these  are  suc- 
ceeded by  some  gay  sallies  with  regard  to  Mrs.  Thomp- 
son's restlessness. 

Pray  learn  [he  said],  if  you  have  not  already  learnt,  like  me, 
to  be  pleased  with  other  People's  Pleasures,  and  happy  with 
their  Happiness,  when  none  occur  of  your  own;  and  then 
perhaps  you  will  not  so  soon  be  weary  of  the  Place  you  chance 
to  be  in,  and  so  fond  of  Rambling  to  get  rid  of  your  Ennui. 
I  fancy  you  have  hit  upon  the  right  Reason  of  your  being  Weary 
of  St.  Omer's,  viz.  that  you  are  out  of  Temper,  which  is  the 
effect  of  full  Living  and  Idleness.  A  Month  in  Bridewell, 
beating  Hemp,  upon  Bread  and  Water,  would  give  you  Health 
and  Spirits,  and  subsequent  Cheerfulness  and  Contentment 
with  every  other  Situation.  I  prescribe  that  Regimen 
for  you,  my  dear,  in  pure  good  will,  without  a  Fee.  And  let 
me  tell  you,  if  you  do  not  get  into  Temper,  neither  Brussels 
nor  Lisle  will  suit  you.  I  know  nothing  of  the  Price  of  Living 
in  either  of  those  Places;  but  I  am  sure  a  single  Woman,  as 
you  are,  might  with  Economy  upon  two  hundred  Pounds  a 
year  maintain  herself  comfortably  anywhere,  and  me  into  the 
Bargain.  Do  not  invite  me  in  earnest,  however,  to  come  and 
live  with  you;  for,  being  posted  here,  I  ought  not  to  comply, 
and  I  am  not  sure  I  should  be  able  to  refuse. 

This  letter  was  written  shortly  after  Franklin's  arrival 
in  France,  but  he  had  already  caught  the  infection 
of  French  gallantry.  It  closes  with  a  lifelike  portrait 
of  himself. 

I  know  you  wish  you  could  see  me  [he  said],  but,  as  you  can't, 
I  will  describe  myself  to  you.  Figure  me  in  your  mind  as 
jolly  as  formerly,  and  as  strong  and  hearty,  only  a  few  years 
older;  very  plainly  dress'd,  wearing  my  thin  gray  strait  hair, 
that  peeps  out  under  my  only  Coiffure,  a  fine  Fur  Cap,  which 
comes  down  my  Forehead  almost  to  my  Spectacles.  Think 
how  this  must  appear  among  the  Powder'd  Heads  of  Paris! 


Franklin's  British  Friends  445 

I  wisn  every  gentleman  and  Lady  in  France  would  only  be  so 
obliging  as  to  follow  my  Fashion,  comb  their  own  Heads  as 
I  do  mine,  dismiss  their  Friseurs,  and  pay  me  half  the  Money 
they  paid  to  them.  You  see,  the  gentry  might  well  afford 
this,  and  I  could  then  enlist  those  Friseurs,  who  are  at  least 
100,000,  and  with  the  Money  I  would  maintain  them,  make  a 
Visit  with  them  to  England,  and  dress  the  Heads  of  your  Minis- 
ters and  Privy  Counsellors ;  which  I  conceive  to  be  at  present 
un  peu  derangees.  Adieu,  Madcap;  and  believe  me  ever,  your 
affectionate  Friend  and  humble  Servant. 

John  Whitehurst,  who  was  a  maKer  of  watches  and 
philosophical  instruments,  and  the  author  of  an  Inquiry 
into  the  Original  State  and  Formation  of  the  Earth,  and  his 
friend,  Anthony  Tissington,  were  residents  of  Derbyshire. 
Some  of  Whiteh'urst's  letters  to  Franklin  are  still  in 
existence,  but  none  from  Franklin  to  Whitehurst  are.  A 
letter  from  Franklin  to  Tissington  has  preserved  one  of 
the  writer's  characteristic  stories.  After  speaking  of  the 
rheumatic  pains,  to  which  Mrs.  Tissington  was  subject, 
he  said : 

Tis  a  most  wicked  Distemper,  &  often  puts  me  in  mind 
of  the  Saying  of  a  Scotch  Divine  to  some  of  his  Brethren 
who  were  complaining  that  their  Flocks  had  of  late  been 
infected  with  Arianism  and  Socinianism.  Mine,  says  he,  is 
infected  with  a  worse  ism  than  either  of  those. — Pray,  Brother, 
what  can  that  be  ? — It  is,  the  Rheumatism. 

Thomas  Viny  was  a  wheel  manufacturer  of  Tenterden, 
Kent.  In  a  letter  to  him,  Franklin  tells  him  that  he 
cannot  without  extreme  reluctance  think  of  using  any 
arguments  to  persuade  him  to  remove  to  America,  because 
of  the  pain  that  the  removal  would  occasion  to  Viny's 
brother.  Possibly,  however,  he  added,  Viny  might  after- 
wards judge  it  not  amiss,  when  the  many  children  that 
he  was  likely  to  have,  were  grown  up,  to  plant  one  of  them 
in  America,  where  he  might  prepare  an  asylum  for  the 


446       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

rest  should  any  great  calamity,  which  might  God  avert, 
befall  England.  A  man  he  knew,  who  had  a  number  of 
sons,  used  to  say  that  he  chose  to  settle  them  at  some 
distance  from  each  other,  for  he  thought  they  throve 
better,  as  he  remarked  that  cabbages,  growing  too  near 
together,  were  not  so  likely  to  come  to  a  head. 

I  shall  be  asleep  before  that  time  [Franklin  continued], 
otherwise  he  might  expect  and  command  my  best  Advice  and 
Assistance.  But  as  the  Ancients  who  knew  not  how  to  write 
had  a  Method  of  transmitting  Friendships  to  Posterity;  the 
Guest  who  had  been  hospitably  entertain' d  in  a  strange 
Country  breaking  a  Stick  with  every  one  who  did  him  a  kind- 
ness; and  the  Producing  such  a  Tally  at  any  Time  afterwards, 
by  a  Descendant  of  the  Host,  to  a  Son  or*  Grandson  of  the 
Guest,  was  understood  as  a  good  Claim  to  special  Regard 
besides  the  Common  Rights  of  Hospitality :  So  if  this  Letter 
should  happen  to  be  preserved,  your  Son  may  produce  it  to 
mine  as  an  Evidence  of  the  Good  will  that  once  subsisted 
between  their  Fathers,  as  an  Acknowledgment  of  the  Obliga- 
tions you  laid  me  under  by  your  many  Civilities  when  I  was 
in  your  Country  and  a  Claim  to  all  the  Returns  due  from  me 
if  I  had  been  living. 

Another  letter  from  Franklin  to  Viny  was  written  at 
Passy.  He  joined  most  heartily  he  said  with  Viny  in  his 
prayers  that  the  Almighty,  who  had  favored  the  just 
cause,  would  perfect  his  work,  and  establish  freedom 
in  the  New  World  as  an  asylum  for  those  of  the  Old  who 
deserved  it.  He  thought  the  war  a  detestable  one,  and 
grieved  much  at  the  mischief  and  misery  it  was  occasioning 
to  many ;  his  only  consolation  being  that  he  did  all  in  his 
power  to  prevent  it.  What  a  pleasure  it  would  be  to 
him  on  his  return  to  America  to  see  his  old  friend  and  his 
children  settled  there!  "I  hope,"  Franklin  concluded, 
"he  will  find  Vines  and  Fig-trees  there  for  all  of  them, 
under  which  we  may  sit  and  converse,  enjoying  Peace  and 


Franklin's  British  Friends  447 

Plenty,  a  good  Government,  good  Laws,  and  Liberty, 
without  which  Men  lose  half  their  Value." 

Caleb  Whitefoord  resided  at  No.  8  Craven  Street, 
London,  or  next  door  to  Mrs.  Stevenson's,  where  Franklin 
resided  during  his  two  missions  to  England,  and  the 
friendship  between  Franklin  and  himself,  though  very 
cordial  on  Whitefoord's  part,  would  seem  to  have  been  on 
Franklin's  part,  though  cordial,  the  friendship  mainly  of 
mere  propinquity. x 

Far  more  significant  were  the  ties  which  bound  Franklin 
to  such  English  friends  as  Peter  Collinson,  the  Rev. 
George  Whitefield,  Lord  Le  Despencer,  James  Hutton, 
David  Hartley  and  George  What  ley. 

Peter  Collinson  was  a  London  mercer  who  had  a  con- 
siderable correspondence  with  America.  He  not  only 
enjoyed  an  acquaintance  with  men  of  prominence  and  in- 
fluence in  the  Colonies,  but  he  earnestly  interested  himself 
in  promoting  the  production  of  American  flax,  hemp,  silk 
and  wine.  He  was  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society,  besides 
being  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries, 
and  it  was  directly  due  to  the  electric  tube  sent  over  by 
him  to  the  Library  Company  of  Philadelphia  that  Franklin 

1  The  business  of  Whitefoord  as  a  wine-merchant  was  carried  on  at  No. 
8  Craven  Street,  and  he  enjoyed  a  considerable  reputation  for  wit  in  his 
time.  He  served  as  Secretary  to  the  Commission  that  settled  the  terms  of 
peace  with  the  United  States.  He  was,  Burke  thought,  a  mere  diseur  de 
bons  mots.  Goldsmith  deemed  him  of  sufficient  importance  to  make  him 
the  subject  of  an  epitaph  intended  to  be  worked  into  the  Retaliation,  and 
reading  as  follows: 

"Here  Whitefoord  reclines,  deny  it  who  can; 
Tho'  he  merrily  lived,  he  is  now  a  grave  man. 
What  pity,  alas!  that  so  lib'ral  a  mind 
Should  so  long  be  to  Newspaper  Essays  confined! 
Who  perhaps  to  the  summit  of  science  might  soar, 
Yet  content  if  the  table  he  set  in  a  roar; 
Whose  talents  to  fit  any  station  were  fit, 
Yet  happy  if  Woodfall  confessed  him  a  wit." 

His  intimacy  with  Franklin,  Whitefoord  said  on  one  occasion,  had  been 
the  "pride  and  happiness"  of  his  life. 


448       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

entered  upon  those  experiments  in  electricity  which  he 
communicated  to  Collinson  in  a  series  of  memorable 
letters,  that  brought  lasting  renown  to  their  author  when 
given  to  the  world  by  Collinson.  In  a  letter  to  Michael 
Collinson,  Franklin  speaks  of  Peter  Collinson  as  our 
"dear  departed  Friend, "  and  pays  a  feeling  tribute  to 
his  unselfish  patronage  of  the  Library  at  Philadelphia. 
He  alludes  to  the  valuable  presents  made  to  the  Library 
by  Collinson  and  others,  whose  generosity  had  been 
kindled  by  Collinson' s  zeal,  and  he  states  the  remarkable 
fact  that  for  more  than  thirty  years  successively  Collinson 
had  participated  in  the  annual  selection  of  books  for  the 
Library,  and  had  shouldered  the  whole  burden  of  buying 
them  in  London,  and  shipping  them  to  Philadelphia 
without  ever  charging  or  even  accepting  any  consideration 
for  his  trouble.  Nay  more,  during  the  same  time,  he  had 
transmitted  to  the  directors  of  the  Library  Company 
the  earliest  account  of  every  new  European  improvement 
in  Agriculture  and  the  Arts,  or  discovery  in  Philosophy. 
Curious  in  botany  as  Collinson  may  have  been,  it  is  not 
hazardous  to  say  that  he  never  gathered  or  sowed  any 
seed  more  fruitful  than  these  benefactions,  and  we  can  read- 
ily understand  how  deeply  his  friendship  must  have  been 
cherished  by  a  spirit  so  congenial  with  his  as  that  of  Frank- 
lin. They  were  friends  before  they  ever  met,  but  it  was 
not  until  Franklin  arrived  in  London  on  his  first  mission 
to  England  that  they  greeted  each  other  face  to  face. 
Franklin's  first  letter  to  America,  written  the  day  after  he 
reached  London,  was  hastily  penned  at  Collinson's  house, 
and,  the  next  day,  John  Hanbury,  the  great  Virginia 
merchant,  by  an  arrangement  with  Collinson,  called  for 
Franklin  in  his  carriage,  and  conveyed  him  to  the  house 
of  Lord  Granville  for  an  interview  with  that  nobleman. 
The  letters  from  Franklin  to  Collinson  on  the  subject 
of  electricity  are,  we  hardly  need  say,  the  most  important 
of  the  former's  letters  to  him,  but  very  valuable,  too,  are 


Franklin's  British  Friends  449 

some  of  his  observations  in  other  letters  to  his  correspond- 
ent on  political  conditions  in  Pennsylvania  and  the 
relations  between  the  Colonies  and  the  mother  country. 
To  the  scientific  letters  and  to  these  observations  we 
shall  have  occasion  to  revert  further  on.  Beyond  a 
reference  to  some  black  silk,  sent  by  Collinson  to  Deborah, 
with  a  generous  disregard  of  the  fact  that  the  fowl  meadow 
grass  seed  that  Franklin  had  sent  to  him  from  America 
never  came  up,  the  correspondence  between  Collinson  and 
Franklin  is  marked  by  few  intimate  features.  It  was, 
however,  on  the  back  of  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  Collin- 
son, in  which  the  former  condoled  with  the  latter  on 
the  loss  of  his  wife,  that  this  good  man,  for  such  we  must 
believe  Collinson  to  have  been,  indorsed  these  singular 
comments,  the  offspring  probably  of  purely  morbid 
self-reproach: 

There  was  no  occasion  of  any  Phylosophy  on  this  ever  to 
be  lamented  occasion.  Peter  Collinson  had  few  feelings  but 
for  Himself.  The  same  Principle  that  led  him  to  deprive  his 
son  of  his  Birthright  when  that  son  lay  in  the  Agonies  of 
Death  and  knew  not  what  he  put  his  hand  to,  supported  Peter 
Collinson  in  the  loss  of  the  best  of  Women  in  a  manner  that 
did  no  Honour  to  his  Feelings,  his  Gratitude  or  his  Humanity. 

The  eye  of  the  reader  has  already  been  drawn  to  the 
Rev.  George  Whitefield,  whose  eloquence,  we  are  told  by 
Franklin  in  the  Autobiography,  "had  a  wonderful  power 
over  the  hearts  and  purses  of  his  hearers."  After  the 
death  of  Whitefield,  Franklin  paid  this  handsome  tribute 
to  him  in  a  letter  to  Robert  Morris  and  Thomas  Leach. 
"I  knew  him  intimately  upwards  of  thirty  years.  His 
Integrity,  Disinterestedness,  and  indefatigable  Zeal  in 
prosecuting  every  good  Work,  I  have  never  seen  equalled, 
I  shall  never  see  exceeded."  To  Franklin,  too,  we  are 
indebted  for  a  striking  description  of  his  characteristics 
as  an  orator,  when  he  came  over  to  Philadelphia  from 

Vol.  1 — 29 


450       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Ireland,  and,  after  being  at  first  permitted  to  preach 
in  some  churches,  was  later  compelled  to  preach  in  the 
fields,  because  the  clergy  took  a  dislike  to  him,  and  refused 
him  their  pulpits. 

He  had  a  loud  and  clear  voice,  and  articulated  his  words  and 
sentences  so  perfectly,  that  he  might  be  heard  and  understood 
at  a  great  distance,  especially  as  his  auditories,  however 
numerous,  observ'd  the  most  exact  silence.  He  preach'd  one 
evening  from  the  top  of  the  Court-house  steps,  which  are  in 
the  middle  of  Market-Street,  and  on  the  west  side  of  Second- 
Street,  which  crosses  it  at  right  angles.  Both  streets  were 
fill'd  with  his  hearers  to  a  considerable  distance.  Being 
among  the  hindmost  in  Market-Street,  I  had  the  curiosity 
to  learn  how  far  he  could  be  heard,  by  retiring  backwards 
down  the  street  towards  the  river;  and  I  found  his  voice 
distinct  till  I  came  near  Front-Street,  when  some  noise  in  the 
street  obscur'd  it.  Imagining  then  a  semi-circle,  of  which 
my  distance  should  be  the  radius,  and  that  it  were  fill'd  with 
auditors,  to  each  of  whom  I  allow'd  two  square  feet,  I  com- 
puted that  he  might  well  be  heard  by  more  than  thirty  thou- 
sand. This  reconcil'd  me  to  the  newspaper  accounts  of  his 
having  preach'd  to  twenty-five  thousand  people  in  the  fields, 
and  to  the  antient  histories  of  generals  haranguing  whole 
armies,  of  which  I  had  sometimes  doubted. 

By  experience,  Franklin  came  to  distinguish  easily 
between  Whitefield's  newly  composed  sermons  and 
those  which  he  had  often  preached  in  the  course  of 
his  travels. 

His  delivery  of  the  latter  was  so  improv'd  by  frequent 
repetitions  that  every  accent,  every  emphasis,  every  modula- 
tion of  voice,  was  so  perfectly  well  turn'd  and  well  plac'd, 
that,  without  being  interested  in  the  subject,  one  could  not 
help  being  pleas'd  with  the  discourse;  a  pleasure  of  much  the 
same  kind  with  that  receiv'd  from  an  excellent  piece  of  musick. 

Notwithstanding  the  extraordinary  influence  of  White- 


Franklin's  British  Friends  451 

field's  oratory  over  his  auditors,  to  which  Franklin  testifies 
so  unqualifiedly,  it  is  obvious  enough,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  a  nature  so  little  given  to  extreme  forms  of  enthu- 
siasm as  that  of  Franklin  could  not  but  regard  the  hysteria 
produced  by  it  with  some  degree  of  contemptuous  amuse- 
ment. 

Who  [he  asked  in  his  Essay  on  "Shavers  and  Trimmers," 
in  the  Pennsylvania  Gazette],  has  been  more  notorious  for  shav- 
ing and  fleecing,  than  that  Apostle  of  Apostles,  that  Preacher 
of  Preachers,  the  Rev.  Mr.  G.  W.?  But  I  forbear  making 
farther  mention  of  this  spiritual  Shaver  and  Trimmer,  lest 
I  should  affect  the  Minds  of  my  Readers  as  deeply  as  his 
Preaching  has  affected  their  Pockets. 

This  was  mere  jesting  on  the  part  of  a  man  to  whom 
everything  had  its  humorous  as  well  as  its  serious  side. 
Very  different  in  spirit  are  some  of  the  passages  in  Frank- 
lin's letters  to  Whitefield. 

I  am  glad  to  hear  [he  wrote  on  one  occasion]  that  you  have 
frequent  opportunities  of  preaching  among  the  great.  If  you 
can  gain  them  to  a  good  and  exemplary  life,  wonderful  changes 
will  follow  in  the  manners  of  the  lower  ranks ;  for  ad  exemplum 
regis,  etc.  On  this  principle,  Confucius,  the  famous  Eastern 
reformer,  proceeded.  When  he  saw  his  country  sunk  in  vice, 
and  wickedness  of  all  kinds  triumphant,  he  applied  himself 
first  to  the  grandees;  and  having,  by  his  doctrine,  won  them 
to  the  cause  of  virtue,  the  commons  followed  in  multitudes. 
The  mode  has  a  wonderful  influence  on  mankind;  and  there 
are  numbers  who,  perhaps,  fear  less  the  being  in  hell,  than 
out  of  the  fashion.  Our  most  western  reformations  began 
with  the  ignorant  mob;  and  when  numbers  of  them  were 
gained,  interest  and  party  views  drew  in  the  wise  and  great. 
Where  both  methods  can  be  used,  reformations  are  likely  to  be 
more  speedy.  O  that  some  method  could  be  found  to  make 
them  lasting!  He  who  discovers  that  will,  in  my  opinion, 
deserve  more,  ten  thousand  times,  than  the  inventor  of  the 
longitude. 


452       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Another  letter  from  Franklin  to  Whitefield  is  not  only 
distinguished  by  the  same  missionary  accent  but  also  by 
the  deep-seated  loyalty  to  the  English  Crown  which  was 
so  slow  in  yielding  first  to  disillusionment  and  then  to 
detestation.  Alluding  to  Whitefield's  desire  to  be  the 
chaplain  of  an  American  army,  he  said  that  he  wished 
that  they  could  be  jointly  employed  by  the  Crown  to 
settle  a  colony  on  the  Ohio. 

What  a  glorious  Thing  [he  exclaimed]  it  would  be,  to 
settle  in  that  fine  Country  a  large  strong  Body  of  Religious 
and  Industrious  People!  What  a  Security  to  the  other 
Colonies;  and  Advantage  to  Britain,  by  Increasing  her  People, 
Territory,  Strength  and  Commerce!  Might  it  not  greatly 
facilitate  the  Introduction  of  pure  Religion  among  the 
Heathen,  if  we  could,  by  such  a  Colony,  show  them  a  better 
Sample  of  Christians  than  they  commonly  see  in  our  Indian 
Traders,  the  most  vicious  and  abandoned  Wretches  of  our 
Nation?  .  .  .  Life,  like  a  dramatic  Piece,  should  not  only  be 
conducted  with  Regularity,  but  methinks  it  should  finish 
handsomely.  Being  now  in  the  last  Act,  I  begin  to  cast 
about  for  something  fit  to  end  with.  Or  if  mine  be  more 
properly  compar'd  to  an  Epigram,  as  some  of  its  few  Lines 
are  but  barely  tolerable,  I  am  very  desirous  of  concluding  with 
a  bright  Point.  In  such  an  Enterprise  I  could  spend  the 
Remainder  of  Life  with  Pleasure;  and  I  firmly  believe  God 
would  bless  us  with  Success,  if  we  undertook  it  with  a  sincere 
Regard  to  his  Honour,  the  Service  of  our  gracious  King,  and 
(which  is  the  same  thing)  the  Publick  Good. 

From  the  joint  enterprise  of  settling  a  colony  on  the 
Ohio  with  Whitefield  to  the  joint  enterprise  Of  abridging 
the  Book  of  English  Prayer  with  Lord  Le  Despencer  was 
a  far  cry,  but  not  too  far  for  Franklin,  as  we  have  seen. 

Lord  Le  Despencer,  or  Sir  Francis  Dashwood,  as  he 
was  known,  when  he  was  one  of  the  jolly  monks  of  Med- 
menham  Abbey,  was  numbered  by  Franklin  among  his 
best  friends,  and  at  West  Wycombe,  the  country  seat  of 


Franklin's  British  Friends  453 

this  nobleman,  Franklin  spent  many  happy  hours.  On 
one  occasion,  he  writes  to  his  son  that  he  has  passed  sixteen 
days  there  most  agreeably.  On  another  occasion,  he 
tells  him  that  he  has  just  come  to  West  Wycombe  to 
spend  a  few  days  and  breathe  a  little  fresh  air.  "I  am 
in  this  House,"  he  said,  "as  much  at  my  Ease  as  if  it 
was  my  own;  and  the  Gardens  are  a  Paradise."  After  a 
journey  to  Oxford,  with  Lord  Le  Despencer,  he  informed 
the  same  correspondent  that  the  former  was  very  good  to 
him  on  all  occasions  and  seemed  of  late  very  desirous  of 
his  company.  Whatever  else  the  owner  of  West  Wycombe 
may  have  been,  Franklin's  letters  leave  us  no  room  to 
doubt  that  he  was  a  capital  host. 

To  a  very  different  type  of  character  in  every  respect 
belonged  James  Hut  ton,  another  dear  friend  of  Franklin. 
He  was  a  bookseller  at  the  sign  of  the  Bible  and  Sun, 
west  of  Temple  Bar,  and  for  fifty-five  years  a  zealous 
member  of  the  Moravian  Church.  His  interest  in  the 
missionary  labors  of  that  Church,  his  benevolence,  which 
knew  no  sectarian  limitations,  his  sense  and  simplicity 
of  manners  won  for  him  an  honorable  standing  even  in 
Court  Circles.  We  are  told  by  William  Temple  Franklin 
that  he  was  highly  esteemed  by  George  III.  and  his  consort, 
and  was  well  known  to  many  of  the  English  nobility  and 
men  of  letters ;  not  being  refused  admittance  to  the  high- 
est ranks  even  at  Buckingham  House,  though  his  ardent 
benevolence  inclined  him  greatly  to  neglect  his  own 
dress  that  he  might  better  feed  the  hungry  and  cover 
the  naked.  A  man  of  that  kind  always  had  easy  access 
to  the  heart  of  Franklin,  open  though  its  hospitable 
portals  were  to  other  friends  of  a  very  different  descrip- 
tion. In  a  letter  to  David  Hartley  from  Passy,  Franklin 
speaks  of  Hutton  in  these  terms:  "An  old  Friend  of 
mine,  Mr.  Hutton,  a  Chief  of  the  Moravians,  who  is  often 
at  the  Queen's  Palace,  and  is  sometimes  spoken  to  by  the 
King,  was  over  here  lately. "     In  a  letter  to  Hutton  himself 


454       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

from  Passy,  Franklin  applies  to  him  the  term,  "My  dear 
old  friend,"  which  with  its  different  variations  meant 
with  him  the  high-water  mark  of  intimacy.  Hutton  is 
also  brought  to  our  sight,  though  in  a  droll  way,  in  the 
Craven  Street  Gazette,  the  mock  Chronicle,  in  which 
Franklin,  with  a  delicacy  and  richness  of  humor  all  his 
own,  pictures  No.  7  Craven  Street  as  a  Court,  Mrs. 
Stevenson  as  a  Queen,  with  lords  and  ladies  in  her  train, 
and  Hutton  and  himself  as  rivals  for  the  good  graces  of 
Dolly  Blount,  Polly's  friend. 

This  Morning  [the  Gazette  notes,  under  date  of  Tuesday, 
Sept.  25],  my  good  Lord  Hutton  call'd  at  Craven-Street  House 
and  enquir'd  very  respectfully  &  affectionately  concerning  the 
Welfare  of  the  Queen.  He  then  imparted  to  the  big  Man 
(Franklin  himself)  a  Piece  of  Intelligence  important  to  them 
both,  and  but  just  communicated  by  Lady  Hawkesworth, 
viz.  that  the  amiable  and  delectable  Companion,  Miss  D 
(orothea)  B  (lount),  had  made  a  Vow  to  marry  absolutely 
him  of  the  two  whose  Wife  should  first  depart  this  Life.  It 
is  impossible  to  express  the  various  Agitations  of  Mind  appear- 
ing in  both  their  Faces  on  this  Occasion.  Vanity  at  the 
Preference  given  them  over  the  rest  of  Mankind;  Affection  to 
their  present  Wives,  Fear  of  losing  them,  Hope,  if  they  must 
lose  them,  to  obtain  the  proposed  Comfort;  Jealousy  of  each 
other  in  case  both  Wives  should  die  together,  &c.  &c.  &c, — 
all  working  at  the  same  time  jumbled  their  Features  into 
inexplicable  Confusion.  They  parted  at  length  with  Profes- 
sions &  outward  Appearances  indeed  of  ever-enduring  Friend- 
ship, but  it  was  shrewdly  suspected  that  each  of  them  sincerely 
wished  Health  &  long  Life  to  the  other's  Wife;  &  that  however 
long  either  of  these  Friends  might  like  to  live  himself,  the  other 
would  be  very  well  pleas'd  to  survive  him. 

Hutton  was  one  of  the  simple  and  warm-hearted  friends 
of  Franklin  who  endeavored  by  their  individual  exertions 
to  accelerate  the  restoration  of  peace  between  Great 
Britain  and  America,  and,  like  all  of  Franklin's  English 


Franklin's  British  Friends  455 

friends,  who  kept  up  a  correspondence  with  him,  while 
the  war  was  going  on,  he  had  to  read  some  scathing  ful- 
minations  against  England. 

You  have  lost  by  this  mad  War  [Franklin  said  in  one  letter 
to  Hutton],  and  the  Barbarity  with  which  it  has  been  carried 
on,  not  only  the  Government  and  Commerce  of  America,  and 
the  public  Revenues  and  private  Wealth  arising  from  that 
Commerce,  but  what  is  more,  you  have  lost  the  Esteem, 
Respect,  Friendship,  and  Affection  of  all  that  great  and 
growing  People,  who  consider  you  at  present,  and  whose 
Posterity  will  consider  you,  as  the  worst  and  wickedest  Nation 
upon  Earth. 

Twelve  days  later,  Franklin  annexed  a  postscript  to 
this  letter  which  must  have  been  an  even  severer  trial  to 
Hutton's  equanimity  than  the  letter  itself. 

I  abominate  with  you  [he  said],  all  Murder,  and  I  may 
add,  that  the  Slaughter  of  Men  in  an  unjust  Cause  is  nothing 
less  than  Murder;  I  therefore  never  think  of  your  present 
Ministers  and  their  Abettors,  but  with  the  Image  strongly 
painted  in  my  View,  of  their  Hands,  red,  wet,  and  dropping 
with  the  Blood  of  my  Countrymen,  Friends,  and  Relations. 

Franklin's  opinion  of  the  King  was  imparted  to  Hutton 
in  terms  fully  as  indignant.  The  letter,  in  which  this  was 
done,  was  prompted  by  a  letter  from  Hutton  to  a  third 
person  giving  an  account  of  some  abominable  murders 
inflicted  by  American  frontiersmen  upon  the  poor  Mora- 
vian Indians.  This  time  it  was  not  English,  but  American 
hands  that  were  red  with  blood,  but  Franklin  was  re- 
sourceful enough  all  the  same  to  fix  the  responsibility  for 
the  murders  by  a  train  of  indirect  reasoning  on  the  King. 
Why,  he  asked,  had  a  single  man  in  England,  who  hap- 
pened to  love  blood  and  to  hate  Americans,  been  permitted 
to  gratify  that  bad  temper  by  hiring  German  murderers, 
and  joining  them  with  his  own  to  destroy,  in  a  continued 


456       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

course  of  bloody  years,  near  100,000  human  creatures, 
many  of  them  possessed  of  useful  talents,  virtues  and 
abilities  to  which  he  had  no  pretension!  It  was  he  who 
had  furnished  the  savages  with  hatchets  and  scalping 
knives,  and  engaged  them  to  fall  upon  defenceless  Ameri- 
can farmers,  and  murder  them  with  their  wives  and  chil- 
dren, paying  for  their  scalps,  of  which  the  account  kept  in 
America  already  amounted,  he  had  heard,  to  near  two 
thousand.  Perhaps,  the  people  of  the  frontiers,  he  de- 
clared, exasperated  by  the  cruelties  of  the  Indians,  had 
been  induced  to  kill  all  Indians  that  fell  into  their  hands 
without  distinction;  so  that  even  these  horrid  murders 
of  the  poor  Moravians  might  be  laid  to  the  King's  charge. 

And  yet  [said  Franklin]  this  Man  lives,  enjoys  all  the 
good  Things  this  World  can  afford,  and  is  surrounded  by 
Flatterers,  who  keep  even  his  Conscience  quiet  by  telling  him 
he  is  the  best  of  Princes!  I  wonder  at  this,  but  I  can  not 
therefore  part  with  the  comfortable  Belief  of  a  Divine  Provi- 
dence ;  and  the  more  I  see  the  Impossibility,  from  the  number 
&  extent  of  his  Crimes,  of  giving  equivalent  Punishment  to  a 
wicked  Man  in  this  Life,  the  more  I  am  con  vine'  d  of  a  future 
State,  in  which  all  that  here  appears  to  be  wrong  shall  be  set 
right,  all  that  is  crooked  made  straight.  In  this  Faith  let  you 
&  I,  my  dear  Friend,  comfort  ourselves;  it  is  the  only  Comfort, 
in  the  present  dark  Scene  of  Things,  that  is  allowed  us. 

The  friendship  between  Franklin  and  David  Hartley 
had  to  endure  the  concussion  of  some  knocks  even  harder 
than  these.  Hartley  was  the  son  of  David  Hartley,  the 
philosopher,  from  whom  Hartley  Coleridge,  the  poet, 
derived  his  name.  He  was  a  B.  A.  of  Corpus  Christi, 
Oxford,  and  a  fellow  of  Merton  College,  and  represented 
Hull  in  Parliament  from  1774  to  1780  and  from  1782  to 
1784.  An  adherent  of  Lord  Rockingham,  and  a  warm 
friend  of  Franklin,  he  was  naturally  enough  selected  as  the 
British  plenipotentiary  to  assist  in  drawing  up  the  treaty 


Franklin's  British  Friends  457 

of  peace  between  Great  Britain  and  America.  Before 
this  time,  however,  he  had  been  engaged  in  a  protracted 
correspondence  with  Franklin,  marked  by  a  degree  of 
liberality  and  humane  feeling  on  his  part  which  did  him 
great  honor.  To  alleviate  the  condition  of  American 
prisoners  in  England,  to  promote  the  exchange  of  these 
prisoners  and  British  prisoners  in  America,  to  bring  about  a 
reunion  between  Great  Britain  and  her  colonies,  and,  that 
failing,  a  separation  attended  by  as  little  mutual  animosity 
as  possible,  were  the  generous  objects  to  which  his  efforts 
were  addressed.  In  pursuing  these  objects,  he  must 
have  found  it  difficult  at  times  to  submit  meekly  to  some 
of  the  ireful  invective  against  his  King,  Parliament  and 
People,  which  punctuates  Franklin's  solicitation  of  his 
mediatory  offices,  in  behalf  of  American  prisoners,  and 
pleas  for  a  peace  between  Great  Britain  and  America, 
attended  by  really  generous  concessions  upon  the  part  of 
Great  Britain.  The  year  after  his  arrival  in  France 
as  our  minister,  Franklin  wrote  to  Hartley: 

As  to  our  submitting  to  the  government  of  Great  Britain,  it 
is  vain  to  think  of  it.  She  has  given  us,  by  her  numberless 
barbarities  in  the  prosecution  of  the  war,  and  in  the  treatment 
of  prisoners,  by  her  malice  in  bribing  slaves  to  murder  their 
masters,  and  savages  to  massacre  the  families  of  farmers,  with 
her  baseness  in  rewarding  the  unfaithfulness  of  servants,  and 
debauching  the  virtue  of  honest  seamen,  intrusted  with  our 
property,  so  deep  an  impression  of  her  depravity,  that  we 
never  again  can  trust  her  in  the  management  of  our  affairs 
and  interests. 

As  the  war  went  on,  leaving  its  trail  of  blood  and 
increasing  hatred  behind  it,  his  language  at  times  becomes 
even  more  intense.  About  a  year  and  a  half  later,  he 
wrote  to  Hartley,  "  We  know  that  your  King  hates  Whigs 
and  Presbyterians;  that  he  thirsts  for  our  Blood,  of  which 
he  has  already  drunk  large  Draughts;  that  his  servile 


458      Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

unprincipled  Ministers  are  ready  to  execute  the- Wickedest 
of  his  Orders,  and  his  venal  Parliament  equally  ready  to 
vote  them  just."  This  outburst  was  evoked  by  what  he 
conceived  to  be  a  cunning  effort  of  the  English  Ministry 
to  divide  America  and  her  French  ally.  The  next  out- 
burst was  provoked  by  the  same  cause.  "  The  Truth  is, M 
he  said,  "we  have  no  kind  of  Faith  in  your  Government, 
which  appears  to  us  as  insidious  and  deceitful  as  it  is 
unjust  and  cruel;  its  Character  is  that  of  the  Spider  in 
Thomson, 

"  Cunning  and  fierce, 
Mixture  abhorr'd  I ! " 

Finally,  all  the  hurrying  feelings  aroused  in  him  at 
times  by  what  he  called  "bloody  and  insatiable  Malice 
and  Wickedness* '  became  condensed  in  an  abstract  term 
so  full  of  passion  as  "devilism."  Franklin  was  not  the 
man  to  take  hold  of  the  handles  of  a  plough  and  then  turn 
back.  In  his  correspondence  with  Hartley,  as  with  his 
other  English  friends,  after  he  entered  upon  his  mission  to 
France,  is  the  clearest  recognition  of  the  fact,  to  use  his 
own  robust  figure  of  speech,  that  England  had  lost  limbs 
which  would  never  grow  again,  and  his  unwavering 
resolution  to  give  his  assent  to  nothing  less  than  the 
complete  independence  of  the  Colonies.  For  him,  for  his 
country,  there  were  never  more  to  be  any  connecting 
links  between  Great  Britain  and  America  except  those  of 
mere  international  good  will  and  commercial  comity. 
Upon  propositions  of  every  sort,  looking  to  a  reconcilia- 
tion between  the  two  lands,  he  lingered  solely  for  the 
purpose  of  obtaining  for  America,  when  peace  finally 
came,  as  large  a  measure  of  territorial  aggrandizement 
as  he  could  possibly  secure.  Of  a  conciliatory  bill,  of 
which  Hartley  sent  him  a  copy,  he  said,  "It  might  have 
erected  a  Wall  of  Brass  round  England,  if  such  a  Measure 
had  been  adopted,   when  Fryar  Bacon's  brazen  Head 


-Franklin's  British  Friends  459 

cried  out,  time  is!     But  the  wisdom  of  it  was  not  seen, 
till  after  the  fatal  Cry  of  time's  past!" 

It  was  the  almost  pathetic  desire  of  such  correspondents 
of  Franklin  as  Hartley  to  save  some  sort  of  organic  tie 
between  the  two  countries  from  the  wreckage  wrought 
by  the  fatal  policy  of  the  British  Ministry,  which  makes 
it  difficult  for  us  to  read  Franklin's  French  letters  to  men 
like  Hutton  and  Hartley  without  feeling  that  the  harsh 
terms,  which  he  often  employed  in  these  letters  about  the 
English  King,  Parliament  and  People,  were  hardly  fair  to 
that  courageous  and  high-minded  band  of  English  patriots, 
who  made  the  American  cause  almost  as  much  theirs  as 
his  own,  and  stopped  only  short  of  treason  in  the  assertion 
of  their  belief  that  the  immemorial  liberties  of  England 
as  well  as  the  liberties  of  America  were  staked  upon 
the  issue  of  the  American  contest.  It  was  the  extreme 
outspoken  dissatisfaction,  with  which  English  Whigs 
regarded  the  effort  of  the  British  Ministry  to  force  its  own 
violent  and  technical  views  of  colonial  policy  upon  America, 
that  made  it  possible  for  Franklin  to  write  to  Englishmen 
as  he  did  about  their  government  without  exciting  either 
frank  or  sullen  resentment.  But  there  was  undoubtedly 
still  another  reason  with  which  politics  had  nothing  to 
do.  These  Whigs  not  only  respected  the  manly  candor, 
with  which  Franklin  expressed  convictions  that  they 
knew  had  been  formed  by  a  singularly  enlightened, 
generous  and  sober  mind,  once  devotedly  attached  by  the 
strongest  ties  of  tradition  and  affection  to  the  colonial 
connection  between  Great  Britain  and  America,  but  they 
had  been  too  intimate  with  him  personally  not  to  be 
aware  that  it  was  not  in  his  nature  to  harbor  any  real  or 
lasting  malignity  of  feeling  towards  anyone.  And  that 
this  view  of  his  character  was  correct  is  shown  by  more 
than  one  feature  of  his  correspondence  with  Hartley.  In 
a  letter  to  Hartley,  he  said  that,  when  Hartley's  nation 
was  hiring  all  the  cutthroats  it  could  collect  of  all  countries 


460       Benjamin   Franklin  Self-Revealed 

and  colors  to  destroy  the  Americans,  it  was  hard  to  per- 
suade the  Americans  not  to  ask,  or  accept  of,  aid  from  any- 
country  that  might  be  prevailed  with  to  grant  it,  and  this 
from  the  hope  that,  though  the  British  then  thirsted  for 
their  blood,  and  pursued  them  with  fire  and  sword,  they 
might  in  some  future  time  treat  them  kindly.  But  the 
outbreak  does  not  seem  so  fierce  when  he  goes  on  to  say, 
"  America  has  been  forced  and  driven  into  the  Arms  of 
France.  She  was  a  dutiful  and  virtuous  Daughter.  A 
cruel  Mother-in-law  turn'd  her  out  of  Doors,  defam'd  her, 
and  sought  her  Life.  All  the  World  knows  her  Innocence, 
and  takes  her  part;  and  her  Friends  hope  soon  to  see  her 
honorably  married."  One  of  the  peculiarities  of  that 
kindly  and  facetious  nature  was  that  its  sense  of  humor 
would  at  times  work  its  way  even  between  the  lines  of 
formal  state  papers ;  to  say  nothing  of  letters  to  a  familiar 
friend  on  the  conduct  of  an  enemy.  Nor  could  Hartley 
doubt  that  the  old  well-springs  of  mirth  and  loving  kind- 
ness were  as  full  as  ever  to  overflowing,  when,  in  response 
to  a  letter  from  him  to  Franklin,  containing  the  Scotch 
ballad,  Auld  Robin  Gray,  he  received  this  lively  applica- 
tion of  the  ballad  to  existing  conditions: 

I  cannot  make  an  entire  application  of  it  to  present  Circum- 
stances; but,  taking  it  in  Parts,  and  changing  Persons,  some  of 
it  is  extremely  apropos.  First  Jenie  may  be  supposed  Old 
England,  and  Jamie,  America.  Jenie  laments  the  loss  of 
Jamie,  and  recollects  with  Pain  his  Love  for  her,  his  Industry 
in  Business  to  promote  her  Wealth  and  Welfare,  and  her  own 
Ingratitude. 

"Young  Jamie  loved  me  weel, 
And  sought  me  for  his  Bride, 
But  saving  ane  Crown, 
He  had  naithing  beside, 

To  make  that  Crown  a  Pound,  my  Jamie  gang'd  to  Sea, 
And  the  Crown  and  the  Pound  were  all  for  me." 


Franklin's  British  Friends  461 

Her  grief  for  this  Separation  is  expressed  very  pathetically. 

'  The  ship  was  a  Wrack, 
Why  did  na  Jennie  die ; 
0  why  was  I  spared 
To  cry,  Wae  is  me!" 

There  is  no  Doubt  but  that  honest  Jammie  had  still  so  much 
Love  for  her  as  to  Pity  her  in  his  Heart,  tho'  he  might,  at  the 
same  time,  be  not  a  little  angry  with  her. 

Towards  the  Conclusion,  we  must  change  the  Persons,  and 
let  Jamie  be  old  England,  Jennie,  America,  and  old  Robin 
Gray,  the  Kingdom  of  France.  Then  honest  Jenie,  having 
made  a  Treaty  of  Marriage  with  Gray,  expresses  her  firm 
Resolution  of  Fidelity,  in  a  manner  that  does  Honour  to  her 
good  Sense,  and  her  Virtue. 

"  I  may  not  think  of  Jamie, 
For  that  would  be  a  Sin, 
But  I  maun  do  my  best, 
A  gude  wife  to  be; 
For  auld  Robin  Gray 
Is  very  kind  to  me." 

How  was  it  possible  for  Hartley  to  remain  angry  with 
a  man  like  this,  even  if  he  was  told  by  him  in  another  letter 
that,  though  there  could  be  but  few  things,  in  which  he 
would  venture  to  disobey  the  orders  of  Congress,  he  would, 
nevertheless,  instantly  renounce  the  commission  that  he 
held  from  it,  and  banish  himself  forever  from  so  infamous 
a  country  as  America,  if  Congress  were  to  instruct  him 
to  seek  a  truce  of  ten  years  with  Great  Britain,  with  the 
stipulation  that  America  was  not  to  assist  France  during 
that  time,  if  the  war  between  Great  Britain  and  France 
continued?  This  was  trying,  though  not  so  trying  per- 
haps as  his  statement  in  still  another  letter  to  Hartley 
that  he  thought  of  his  reasonings  to  show  that,  if  France 
should  require  of  America  something  unreasonable, 
America  would  not  be  obliged  by  the  treaty  between 


462       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

them  to  continue  the  war  as  her  ally,  what  he  supposed 
an  honest  woman  would  think,  if  a  gallant  should  enter- 
tain her  with  suppositions  of  cases  in  which  infidelity  to 
her  husband  would  be  justifiable.  Nor  was  the  merry 
adaptation  of  the  ballad  of  Auld  Robin  Gray  the  only 
thing  of  the  kind  that  tended  to  relieve  the  tension  of  the 
reproaches  heaped  by  Franklin  upon  Great  Britain  in 
his  letters  to  Hartley.  In  the  same  letter,  in  which 
he  depicts  the  King  as  thirsty  for  still  further  draughts  of 
American  blood,  and  repels  with  apparently  hot  wrath 
the  suggestion  of  Hartley  that  the  alliance  between  France 
and  America  was  the  greatest  stumbling-block  in  the  way 
of  peace  between  Great  Britain  and  France,  he  tells  Hart- 
ley that  the  proposition  to  separate  France  and  America 
puts  him  in  mind  of  the  comic  farce  entitled  Godsend, 
or  The  Wreckers.  It  was  not  hard,  of  course,  for  him 
to  be  put  in  mind  of  something  conceived  by  his  own 
mind.  The  farce  opens  with  this  stage  introduction: 
(A  Ship  riding  at  anchor  in  a  great  Storm.  A  Lee  Shore 
full  of  Rocks,  and  lin'd  with  people,  furnish'd  with  Axes 
&  Carriages  to  cut  up  Wrecks,  knock  the  Sailors  on  the 
Head,  and  carry  off  the  Plunder;  according  to  Custom.) 
Then,  after  a  lively  dialogue  between  the  wreckers,  who 
have  grown  impatient  with  the  staunch  way  in  which  the 
ship  is  riding  out  the  storm,  they  put  off  in  a  boat  in  the 
hope  of  luring  her  to  the  shore,  and  come  under  her  stern, 
and  try  to  persuade  her  captain,  in  the  course  of  another 
lively  dialogue,  that  his  cable  is  a  damned  rotten 
French  cable,  and  will  part  of  itself  in  half  an  hour;  only 
to  be  told  by  the  captain  that  they  are  rogues,  and  offer 
nothing  but  treachery  and  mischief,  and  that  his  cable 
is  good  and  strong,  and  would  hold  long  enough  to  balk 
their  projects.  The  dialogue  ends  with  the  exclamation 
by  the  spokesman  of  the  wreckers,  "Come,  my  Lads, 
let's  be  gone.  This  Fellow  is  not  so  great  a  Fool  as  we 
took  him  to  be." 


Franklin's  British  Friends  463 

Familiar  affection  glistens  in  every  line  of  the  letters 
from  Franklin  to  George  Whatley,  and  one  of  them  is 
suffused  with  the  genial  warmth  of  his  best  social  hours. 
After  some  strictures  on  an  epitaph  by  Pope,  he  said  in 
this  letter: 

I  like  better  the  concluding  Sentiment  in  the  old  Song, 
call'd  The  Old  Man's  Wish,  wherein,  after  wishing  for  a  warm 
house  in  a  country  Town,  an  easy  Horse,  some  good  oldauthors, 
ingenious  and  cheerful  Companions,  a  Pudding  on  Sundays, 
with  stout  Ale,  and  a  bottle  of  Burgundy,  &c,  &c,  in  separate 
Stanzas,  each  ending  with  this  burthen, 

"May  I  govern  my  Passions  with  an  absolute  sway, 
Grow  wiser  and  better  as  my  Strength  wears  away, 
Without  Gout  or  Stone,  by  a  gentle  Decay"; 

he  adds, 

"With  a  courage  undaunted  may  I  face  my  last  day, 
And,  when  I  am  gone,  may  the  better  Sort  say, 
1  In  the  Morning  when  Sober,  in  the  Evening  when  mellow, 
He's  gone,  and  has  not  left  behind  him  his  Fellow; 
For  he  governed  his  Passions,  &c. ' " 

But  what  signifies  our  Wishing?  Things  happen,  after  all,  as 
t]jey  will  happen.  I  have  sung  that  wishing  Song  a  thousand 
times,  when  I  was  young,  and  now  find,  at  Four-score,  that  the 
three  Contraries  have  befallen  me,  being  subject  to  the  Gout 
and  the  Stone,  and  not  being  yet  Master  of  all  my  Passions. 
Like  the  proud  Girl  in  my  Country,  who  wished  and  resolv'd 
not  to  marry  a  Parson,  nor  a  Presbyterian,  nor  an  Irishman; 
and  at  length  found  herself  married  to  an  Irish  Presbyterian 
Parson. 

In  the  course  of  one  of  the  summer  rambles,  which  he 
took  every  year  for  twenty  years,  for  health  and  recreation, 
Franklin  twice  visited  Scotland,  once  in  1759,  and  once 
in  1 77 1.  As  the  result  of  civilities  received  by  him  in  that 
country  at  the  hands  of  Sir  Alexander  Dick,  the  President 


464       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

of  the  College  of  Physicians  at  Edinburgh,  and  Henry 
Home,  Lord  Karnes,  a  Judge  of  the  Court  of  Session,  and 
author  of  The  Elements  of  Criticism  and  The  Sketches  of  the 
History  of  Man,  he  became  a  fast  friend  of  these  two  emi- 
nent men.  After  completing  with  his  son  a  tour  of  nearly 
1500  miles  in  1759,  he  wrote  to  Sir  Alexander  Dick,  whose 
guests  they  had  been  for  a  time,  that  the  many  civilities, 
favors  and  kindnesses  heaped  upon  them,  while  they  were 
in  Scotland,  had  made  the  most  lasting  impression  upon 
their  minds,  and  endeared  that  country  to  them  beyond 
expression.  In  the  same  letter,  he  asked  Sir  Alexander 
to  assure  Lady  Dick  that  he  had  great  faith  in  her  parting 
prayers  that  the  purse  she  honored  him  with  would 
never  be  quite  empty.  His  letters  to  Lord  Karnes  testified 
in  even  stronger  terms  to  the  happy  hours  that  he  had 
spent  in  Scotland  on  this  visit. 

How  unfortunate  I  was  [he  wrote  to  him]  that  I  did  not 
press  you  and  Lady  Karnes  more  strongly  to  favor  us  with 
your  company  farther.  How  much  more  agreeable  would  our 
journey  have  been,  if  we  could  have  enjoyed  j^ou  as  far  as 
York.  We  could  have  beguiled  the  way,  by  discoursing  of  a 
thousand  things,  that  now  we  may  never  have  an  opportunity 
of  considering  together;  for  conversation  warms  the  mind, 
enlivens  the  imagination,  and  is  continually  starting  fresn 
game,  that  is  immediately  pursued  and  taken,  and  which 
would  never  have  occurred  in  the  duller  intercourse  of  episto- 
lary correspondence.  So  that  whenever  I  reflect  on  the 
great  pleasure  and  advantage  I  received  from  the  free  com- 
munication of  sentiment,  in  the  conversations  we  had  at  Karnes, 
and  in  the  agreeable  little  rides  to  the  Tweed  side,  I  shall  forever 
regret  our  premature  parting. 

Even  more  fervid  was  the  conclusion  of  this  letter: 

Our  conversation  till  we  came  to  York,  was  chiefly  a 
recollection  of  what  we  had  seen  and  heard,  the  pleasure  we 
had  enjoyed,  and  the  kindness  we  had  received  in  Scotland,  and 


Franklin's  British  Friends  465 

how  far  that  country  had  exceeded  our  expectations.  On 
the  whole,  I  must  say,  I  think  the  time  we  spent  there,  was 
six  weeks  of  the  densest  happiness  I  have  met  with  in  any  part 
of  my  life :  and  the  agreeable  and  instructive  society  we  found 
there  in  such  plenty,  has  left  so  pleasing  an  impression  on 
my  memory,  that  did  not  strong  connexions  draw  me  else- 
where, I  believe  Scotland  would  be  the  country  I  should 
choose  to  spend  the  remainder  of  my  days  in. 

In  a  later  letter  to  Lord  Kames,  he  returns  to  the  same 
pleasing  field  of  association. 

Your  invitation  to  make  another  jaunt  to  Scotland,  and 
offer  to  meet  us  half  way  en  famille,  was  extremely  obliging. 
Certainly  I  never  spent  my  time  anywhere  more  agreeably, 
nor  have  I  been  in  any  place,  where  the  inhabitants  and  their 
conversation  left  such  lastingly  pleasing  impressions  on  my 
mind,  accompanied  with  the  strongest  inclination  once  more 
to  visit  that  hospitable,  friendly,  and  sensible  people. 

When  we  recall  Franklin's  distaste  for  theology  and 
metaphysics,  the  humor  that  ever  lurked  about  his  lips, 
and  Sydney  Smith's  famous  observation  that  it  requires 
a  surgical  operation  to  get  a  joke  into  a  Scotchman's 
head,  we  may  well  experience  a  sensation  of  momentary 
surprise  when  we  read  these  earnest  tributes  to  the  charm 
of  Scotch  social  conditions  in  1759 — a  sense  of  surprise 
increased  by  the  fact  that,  in  the  Autobiography,  Franklin 
ends  a  little  dissertation  on  the  odious  nature  of  dis- 
putation with  these  words:  "Persons  of  good  sense,  I 
have  since  observed,  seldom  fall  into  it,  except  lawyers, 
university  men,  and  men  of  all  sorts  that  have  been  bred 
at  Edinborough."  But  all  such  sensations  of  surprise 
pass  away  when  we  remember  that  manly  simplicity, 
practical  sagacity,  a  spirit  of  enterprise  and  a  love  of 
learning,  which  no  discouragements  can  chill,  were  also 
Scotch  characteristics  that  Franklin  shared  with  Scotch- 
men. 

VOL.    I — 30 


466       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

When  Franklin  returned  in  1771  to  the  "odious-smells, 
barbarous  sounds,  bad  suppers,  excellent  hearts  and  most 
enlightened  understandings, "  amid  which  Sydney  Smith, 
with  his  exaggerated  humor,  afterwards  pictured  himself 
as  dwelling  when  he  was  a  resident  of  Edinburgh,  William 
Franklin  did  not  accompany  him. 

In  Scotland  [Franklin  wrote  to  his  son  after  this  second 
visit]  I  spent  5  Days  with  Lord  Kaims  at  his  Seat,  Blair 
Drummond  near  Stirling,  two  or  three  Days  at  Glasgow,  two 
Days  at  Carron  Iron  Works,  and  the  rest  of  the  Month  in  and 
about  Edinburgh,  lodging  at  David  Hume's,  who  entertain'd 
me  with  the  greatest  Kindness  and  Hospitality,  as  did  Lord 
Kaims  &  his  Lady.  All  our  old  Acquaintance  there,  Sir 
Alexr  Dick  and  Lady,  Mr.  McGowan,  Drs.  Robertson,  Cullen, 
Black,  Ferguson,  Russel,  and  others,  enquired  affectionately 
of  your  Welfare.  I  was  out  three  Months,  and  the  Journey 
was  evidently  of  great  service  to  my  Health. 

The  letters  from  Franklin  to  Lord  Karnes  cover  a  great 
variety  of  topics ;  and  to  his  observations  on  some  of  these 
topics,  which  were  of  a  political  or  scientific  nature,  we 
shall  return  in  other  connections.  One  letter  was  written, 
when  Franklin  was  on  the  eve  of  sailing  from  Portsmouth 
to  America  in  1762,  and  that  the  moment  of  embarkation 
upon  the  perilous  seas  of  that  time  was  a  solemn  one  is 
manifest  enough  in  its  opening  statements: 

My  dear  Lord, 

I  am  now  waiting  here  only  for  a  wind  to  waft  me  to  America, 
but  cannot  leave  this  happy  island  and  my  friends  in  it,  with- 
out extreme  regret,  though  I  am  going  to  a  country  and  a 
people  that  I  love.  I  am  going  from  the  old  world  to  the  new; 
and  I  fancy  I  feel  like  those,  who  are  leaving  this  world  for 
the  next:  grief  at  the  parting;  fear  of  the  passage;  hope  of  the 
future. 

But  never  were  votive  chaplets  woven  and  gratefully 
suspended  by  a  voyager  after  a  more  prosperous  passage 


Franklin's  British  Friends  467 

than  this.  Franklin  left  England  in  company  with  ten 
sail  of  merchant  ships,  under  the  convoy  of  a  man-of- 
war,  touched  at  the  heavenly  Madeira  Islands,  and  was 
then  caught  up  in  the  benign  trade  winds,  and  borne 
safely  to  the  American  coast. 

The  weather  was  so  favourable  [he  stated  in  another  letter 
to  Lord  Karnes]  that  there  were  few  days  in  which  we  could 
not  visit  from  ship  to  ship,  dining  with  each  other,  and  on 
board  of  the  man-of-war;  which  made  the  time  pass  agreeably, 
much  more  so  than  when  one  goes  in  a  single  ship ;  for  this  was 
like  travelling  in  a  moving  village,  with  all  one's  neighbours 
about  one. 

Among  the  things  upon  which  Franklin  prided  himself 
was  the  fact  that  he  shaved  himself,  and  in  one  of  his 
letters  to  Lord  Karnes  this  trivial  circumstance  is  brought 
to  our  notice  in  these  wise  words: 

I  have  long  been  of  an  opinion  similar  to  that  you  express, 
and  think  happiness  consists  more  in  small  conveniences  or 
pleasures  that  occur  every  day,  than  in  great  pieces  of  good 
fortune  that  happen  but  seldom  to  a  man  in  the  course  of  his 
life.  Thus  I  reckon  it  among  my  felicities,  that  I  can  set  my 
own  razor,  and  shave  myself  perfectly  well ;  in  which  I  have  a 
daily  pleasure,  and  avoid  the  uneasiness  one  is  sometimes 
obliged  to  suffer  from  the  dirty  fingers  or  bad  breath  of  a 
slovenly  barber. 

There  was  also  a  link  of  friendship  between  Franklin 
and  David  Hume.  In  a  letter  to  Strahan,  Franklin, 
when  on  his  visit  to  Scotland  in  1771,  writes  to  him  that 
Hume,  agreeably  to  the  precepts  of  the  Gospel,  had 
received  the  stranger,  and  that  he  was  then  living  with 
him  at  his  house  in  the  New  Town  at  Edinburgh  most 
happily.  In  another  letter,  a  week  or  so  later,  he  in- 
formed Strahan,  after  a  short  excursion  from  Edinburgh, 
that  he  was  well  and  again  under  the  hospitable  roof 


468       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

of  the  good  Samaritan.  Hume  was  too  much  of  a  bigoted 
Tory  not  to  snarl  a  little  at  Franklin's  "factious"  spirit, 
when  the  Revolution  was  coming  on,  but,  when  Franklin 
was  leaving  England  in  1762,  he  paid  him  this  handsome 
compliment : 

I  am  very  sorry,  that  you  intend  soon  to  leave  our  hemi- 
sphere. America  has  sent  us  many  good  things,  gold,  silver, 
sugar,  indigo,  &c;  but  you  are  the  first  philosopher,  and 
indeed  the  first  great  man  of  letters  for  whom  we  are  beholden 
to  her.  It  is  our  own  fault,  that  we  have  not  kept  him; 
whence  it  appears,  that  we  do  not  agree  with  Solomon,  that 
wisdom  is  above  gold;  for  we  take  care  never  to  send  back  an 
ounce  of  the  latter,  which  we  once  lay  our  fingers  upon. 

It  was  a  dangerous  thing  to  enter  into  a  competition  of 
compliments  with  Franklin,  as  his  reply  to  this  letter 
showed. 

Your  compliment  of  gold  and  wisdom  [he  said]  is  very  oblig- 
ing to  me,  but  a  little  injurious  to  your  country.  The  various 
value  of  everything  in  every  part  of  this  world  arises,  you 
know,  from  the  various  proportions  of  the  quantity  to  the 
demand.  We  are  told,  that  gold  and  silver  in  Solomon's  time 
were  so  plenty,  as  to  be  of  no  more  value  in  his  country  than  the 
stones  in  the  street.  You  have  here  at  present  just  such  a 
•plenty  of  wisdom.  Your  people  are,  therefore,  not  to  be 
censured  for  desiring  no  more  among  them  than  they 
have;  and  if  I  have  any,  I  should  certainly  carry  it  where, 
from  its  scarcity,  it  may  probably  come  to  a  better  market. 

This  was  certainly  a  ponderous  compliment,  but  it 
does  not  seem  quite  so  much  so,  when  read  after  the 
alleviating  story  which  immediately  preceded  it.  Refer- 
ring to  a  ridiculous  dispute,  mentioned  by  his  correspond- 
ent, he  said: 

Judges  in  their  decisions  often  use  precedents.  I  have 
somewhere  met  with  one,  that  is  what  the  lawyers  call  a  case 


Franklin's  British  Friends  469 

in  point.  The  Church  people  and  the  Puritans  in  a  country 
town  had  once  a  bitter  contention  concerning  the  erecting  of  a 
Maypole,  which  the  former  desired  and  the  latter  opposed. 
Each  party  endeavoured  to  strengthen  itself  by  obtaining  the 
authority  of  the  mayor,  directing  or  forbidding  a  Maypole. 
He  heard  their  altercation  with  great  patience,  and  then 
gravely  determined  thus;  "You,  that  are  for  having  no  May- 
pole, shall  have  no  Maypole;  and  you,  that  are  for  having  a 
Maypole,  shall  have  a  Maypole.  Get  about  your  business, 
and  let  me  hear  no  more  of  this  quarrel.' ' 

Other  Scotch  friends  of  Franklin  were  William  Alexander, 
a  connection  of  Lord  Stirling,  and  his  two  daughters, 
one  of  whom,  Mariamne,  became  the  wife  of  Franklin's 
nephew,  Jonathan  Williams.  A  letter  from  Alexander 
to  Franklin  has  its  value  because  of  the  knowledge  that 
it  affords  to  us  of  the  personal  bearing  of  Arthur  Lee 
who  was,  we  shall  see,  jealous,  haughty  and  sensitive 
enough  to  curdle  even  the  sweet  milk  of  Franklin's 
amiable  nature.  "I  see, "  wrote,  Alexander,  "you  have 
made  my  old- friend  Lee  a  minister  at  Madrid,  I  think 
he  has  very  much  the  manners  of  a  Spaniard  when  he  is 
not  angry."  It  was  Alexander  also  whose  careful  mer- 
cantile habits  impelled  him  to  write  to  Franklin,  when 
he  observed  the  disorder  in  which  the  latter  kept  his 
papers  at  Passy,  this  word  of  caution: 

Will  you  forgive  me  my  Dear  Sir  for  noticing,  that  your 
Papers  seem  to  me  to  lye  a  little  loosely  about  your  hands — 
you  are  to  consider  yourself  as  surrounded  by  spies  and  amongst 
people  who  can  make  a  cable  from  a  thread;  would  not  a 
spare  half  hour  per  day  enable  your  son  to  arrange  all  your 
papers,  useless  or  not,  so  that  you  could  come  at  them  sooner, 
and  not  one  be  visible  to  a  prying  eye. 

The  only  intimate  friend,  we  believe,  that  Franklin 
had  in  Ireland  was  Sir  Edward  Newenham,  a  member  of 
the  Irish  Parliament,  whose  sympathy  with  the  American 


47°       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

cause  was  so  extreme  that  he  appeared  in  his  seat  in  deep 
mourning  when  the  news  of  General  Montgomery's  death 
reached  Ireland.  Unfortunately,  of  the  many  letters,  that 
Franklin  wrote  to  him,  only  two  or  three,  of  comparatively 
meagre  interest,  survive.  But  of  Ireland  itself  we  have 
some  graphic  details  in  his  letters  to  other  persons.  In 
one  to  Thomas  Cushing,  he  says  of  the  Irish,  after  a 
tour  of  the  island  with  his  friend,  Richard  Jackson, 
"There  are  many  brave  Spirits  among  them.  The 
Gentry  are  a  very  sensible,  polite,  friendly  and  handsome 
People.  Their  Parliament  makes  a  most  respectable 
Figure,  with  a  number  of  very  good  Speakers  in  both 
Parties,  and  able  Men  of  Business."  He  then  tells 
Cushing  in  modest  terms  how,  when  he  was  on  his  way 
to  the  gallery  in  the  Parliament  House  at  Dublin,  the 
whole  assembly,  upon  being  informed  by  the  Speaker 
that  there  was  in  town  an  American  gentleman  of  dis- 
tinguished character  and  merit,  who  was  a  member  or 
delegate  of  some  of  the  Parliaments  in  America,  by  a 
loud,  unanimous  expression  of  its  will  voted  to  admit 
him  to  the  privileges  of  the  floor ;  whereupon  two  members 
came  to  him  without  the  bar,  where  he  was  standing,  led 
him  in  and  placed  him  very  honorably. 

Other  friends  of  Franklin  there  were  whom  it  is  difficult 
to  classify  either  as  Englishmen  or  Americans,  such  as 
General  Horatio  Gates  and  General  Charles  Lee,  who  were 
born  in  England  but  became  celebrated  in  America,  and 
Benjamin  West,  the  painter,  who  was  born  in  America, 
but  passed  his  mature  life  in  England.  That  Franklin 
was  on  very  friendly  relations  with  Gates  there  can  be 
no  doubt,  for  in  one  of  his  letters  to  him  he  calls  him  his 
"Dear  old  friend,"  and  that  was  a  term  never  applied 
by  him  to  any  but  his  intimates.  Nor  can  there  be 
much  doubt  as  to  what  it  was  that  brought  and  kept 
Franklin  and  Gates  together  as  friends.  It  was  the 
game  to  which  Franklin  was  so  much  addicted  that  he 


Franklin's  British  Friends  471 

even  expounded  its  morals  in  an  essay — chess.  ' '  When, ' ' 
he  wrote  to  Gates  from  Passy,  "shall  we  meet  again  in 
cheerful  converse,  talk  over  our  adventures,  and  finish 
with  a  quiet  game  of  chess?"  And  on  the  same  day  that 
he  addressed  to  Washington  the  noble  letter,  declaring 
that,  if  the  latter  were  to  come  to  Europe,  he  would 
know  and  enjoy  what  posterity  would  say  of  Washington, 
he  wrote  to  Gates,  "May  God  give  us  soon  a  good  Peace, 
and  bring  you  and  I  (sic)  together  again  over  a  Chess 
board,  where  we  may  have  Battles  without  Bloodshed." 

How  an  eccentric  and  perfidious  man  like  General 
Charles  Lee,  whose  temper  alone  was  so  repugnant  to 
Franklin's  dislike  of  disputation  as  to  win  for  him  the 
nickname  of  "Boiling  Water"  from  the  Indians,  could 
ever  have  passed  himself  off  with  Franklin  as  genuine  coin 
is  hard  to  understand,  but  he  appears  to  have  done  so. 
"Yours  most  affectionately,"  is  the  manner  in  which  one 
of  Franklin's  letters  to  him  ends.  In  another  letter  to 
Lee,  Franklin  gravely  sums  up  in  formal  numerical 
sequence  his  reasons  for  thinking  that  bows  and  arrows 
were  good  weapons  not  wisely  laid  aside.  The  idea  is 
one  so  little  in  harmony  with  his  practical  turn  of  mind, 
and  is  reasoned  out  so  elaborately,  that  we  form  a  shrewd 
suspicion  as  we  read  that  this  was  after  all  but  his  humor- 
ous way  of  replying  to  his  erratic  friend's  suggestion  that 
the  use  of  pikes  by  the  American  Army  might  not  be  a 
bad  thing. 

A  very  different  kind  of  friend  was  Benjamin  West. 
It  was  he  that  Franklin  had  in  mind  when  he  wrote  to 
Polly  Stevenson  in  1763,  "After  the  first  Cares  for  the 
Necessaries  of  Life  are  over,  we  shall  come  to  think  of  the 
Embellishments.  Already  some  of  our  young  Geniuses 
begin  to  lisp  Attempts  at  Painting,  Poetry,  and  Musick. 
We  have  a  young  Painter  now  studying  at  Rome. ' '  Twenty 
years  later,  the  lisping  attempts  of  America  at  painting 
had    become    so    distinctly    articulate,    and    the    young 


472       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

painter,  who  was  studying  at  Rome,  had  become*  so 
famous,  that  Franklin  could  write  to  Jan  Ingenhousz, 
"In  England  at  present,  the  best  History  Painter,  West; 
the  best  Portrait  Painter,  Copley,  and  the  best  Landscape 
Painter,  Taylor,  at  Bath,  are  all  Americans."  Benjamin 
West,  and  his  wife,  as  Elizabeth  Shewell,  were  friends  of 
Franklin  and  Deborah  before  West  left  his  native  Penn- 
sylvania for  Europe;  and  the  friendship  between  the 
artist  and  his  wife  and  Franklin  was  kept  alive  by  affec- 
tionate intercourse  in  England.  For  one  of  West's  sons 
Franklin  became  godfather.  "It  gave  me  great  Pleas- 
ure," he  said  in  a  letter  to  West,  referring  to  a  letter 
from  West  to  him,  "as  it  inform'd  me  of  the  Welfare  of  a 
Family  I  so  much  esteem  and  love,  and  that  my  Godson 
is  a  promising  Boy."  The  letter  concludes  with  loving 
words  for  the  godson  and  Raphael,  West's  oldest  son,  and 
"Betsey,"  West's  wife. 

We  have  by  no  means  taken  a  complete  census  of  Frank- 
lin's American  and  British  friends.  For  instance,  in  a 
letter  to  Doctor  Cooper  from  London,  he  refers  to  a  Mr. 
Mead,  first  Commissioner  of  the  Customs  in  England, 
whom  we  have  not  mentioned,  as  a  particular  and  inti- 
mate friend  of  his;  to  say  nothing  of  other  persons  with 
whom  his  intercourse  was  very  friendly  but  either  too  col- 
orless to  arrest  our  attention  in  reading  his  correspondence, 
or  to  even  bring  them  up  in  his  correspondence  at  all. 
But  we  have  marshalled  quite  enough  of  these  friends 
before  the  eye  of  the  reader,  we  are  sure,  to  satisfy  him 
that  few  human  beings  ever  had  such  a  wealth  of  affection 
heaped  on  them  as  Franklin. 


CHAPTER  VII 
FranKlin's  FrencH  Friends 

TO  the  host  of  friends  mentioned  above,  numerous 
as  it  was,  another  great  addition  was  to  be  made 
when  Franklin  became  one  of  our*envoys  to  France. 
In  the  various  Colonies  of  America,  so  unlike  each  other 
in  many  respects,  in  England,  in  Scotland,  his  liberal 
instincts  and  quick  sympathies  ran  out  into  new  social 
forms  almost  with  the  fluid  ease  of  the  melted  tallow  which 
he  had  poured,  in  his  boyhood,  into  his  father's  candle 
moulds;  but  of  all  the  impressions  that  he  £ver  derived 
from  any  society,  that  which  was  made  upon  him  by 
French  society  certifies  most  strikingly  to  the  wonderful 
plasticity  of  his  nature,  under  the  pressure  of  new  condi- 
tions. So  permeated  did  he — one  of  the  truest  progenitors 
of  distinctively  American  ideas  and  attributes,  and  one 
of  the  truest  exponents  of  the  robust  Anglo-Saxon  char- 
acter— become  with  the  genius  of  the  French  People  that 
a  Frenchman,  Henri  Martin,  the  historian,  has  declared 
that  he  was  "of  a  mind  altogether  French  in  its  grace 
and  elasticity." 

There  was  a  time,  of  course,  when  Franklin,  apart  from 
the  inveteracy  of  the  old  English  prejudice,  which  be- 
lieved that  upon  every  pair  of  English  legs  marched  three 
Frenchmen,  had  no  good  blood  for  the  French  because 
of  the  agony  in  which  they  had  for  so  many  years,  with 
the  aid  of  their  savage  friends,  kept  the  colonial  frontier. 

473 


474       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

"I  fancy  that  intriguing  nation  would  like  very  well 
to  meddle  on  occasion,  and  blow  up  the  coals  between 
Britain  and  her  colonies;  but  I  hope  we  shall  give  them 
no  opportunity."  This  was  his  quiet  comment  even  as 
late  as  1767  in  a  letter  to  William  Franklin  upon  the 
sedulous  attentions  recently  paid  to  him  by  Monsieur 
Durand,  the  French  plenipotentiary  in  London,  whose 
masters  were  fully  awake  to  the  fact  that  the  quarrel 
between  Great  Britain  and  her  Colonies  might  be  a  pretty 
one  from  the  point  of  view  of  French  interests,  and  that 
in  duels  it  is  not  the  pistols  but  the  seconds  that  kill. 
But  this  was  politics.  Long  before  Franklin  crossed  the 
Atlantic  on  his  French  mission,  he  had  felt,  during  his 
visits  to  France  in  1767  and  1769,  the  bewitching  influence 
of  social  conditions  perpetually  enlivened  and  refreshed 
by  the  vivacity  and  inventive  resource  which  were  such 
conspicuous  features  of  his  own  character.  After  his 
return  from  France  in  1767,  he  wrote  to  D'Alibard: 
"The  Time  I  spent  in  Paris,  and  in  the  improving  Con- 
versation and  agreeable  Society  of  so  many  learned  and 
ingenious  Men,  seems  now  to  me  like  a  pleasing  Dream, 
from  which  I  was  sorry  to  be  awaked  by  finding  myself 
again  at  London."  These  agreeable  impressions  were 
confirmed  by  his  return  to  France  in  1769.  After  stating 
in  a  letter  to  Dupont  de  Nemours  in  the  succeeding  year 
that  he  expected  to  return  to  America  in  the  ensuing  sum- 
mer, he  exclaimed,"  Would  to  God  I  could  take  with  me 
Messrs.  Dupont,  du  Bourg,  and  some  other  French 
Friends  with  their  good  Ladies!  I  might  then,  by  mixing 
them  with  my  Friends  in  Philadelphia,  form  a  little  happy 
Society  that  would  prevent  my  ever  wishing  again  to 
visit  Europe." 

It  was,  therefore,  to  no  entirely  novel  social  conditions 
that  Franklin  was  introduced  when  he  found  himself 
again  in  France  in  1776.  At  any  rate,  no  chameleon  was 
ever  quicker  to  absorb  the  color  of  his  latest  background. 


Franklin's  French  Friends  475 

As  time  elapsed,  nothing  but  his  inability  to  write  and 
speak  French  with  the  facility  of  a  native-born  Frenchman 
separated  him  in  a  social  sense  from  the  mass  of  French 
men  and  women,  by  whom  he  was  admired,  courted  and 
flattered  almost  from  the  day  that  he  set  foot  in  France 
until  the  day  that  he  was  conveyed  in  one  of  the  Queen's 
litters  to  the  coast  on  his  return  to  America.  How  far 
this  assimilation  was  the  deliberate  achievement  of  a 
wise  man,  who  never  failed  to  act  upon  the  principle 
that  the  best  way  of  managing  men  is  to  secure  their  good 
will  first,  how  far  but  the  unconscious  self -adjustment  of  a 
pliable  disposition  it  is  impossible  to  say.  But  there 
can  be  no  doubt  about  the  amazing  sympathy  with 
which  Franklin  entered  into  the  social  life  of  the  French 
people.  Beneath  the  gay,  pleasure-loving  exterior  that 
he  presented  to  French  society,  there  was  always  the 
thought  of  that  land  over-sea,  so  singularly  blessed  by 
Providence  with  material  comfort  and  equality  of  fortune, 
with  the  general  diffusion  of  education  and  enlightenment, 
and  with  political  institutions  bound  to  the  past  only 
by  the  wisdom  of  experience.  Always  beneath  that 
exterior,  too,  was  a  glowing  resentment  of  the  wrongs 
that  England  had  inflicted  upon  America,  an  enthusiastic 
sense  of  the  "glorious  cause"  in  which  America  was 
engaged,  and  a  resolution  as  fixed  as  the  eye  of  Nemesis 
that  no  hand  but  the  hand  of  America  itself  should  fill 
out  the  outlines  of  the  imperial  destiny,  in  which  he  had 
once  been  so  eagerly,  even  pathetically,  desirous  that 
England  should  share.  But  these  were  thoughts  and 
purposes  reserved  for  the  hours  of  business,  or  of  con- 
fidential intercourse  with  his  American  compatriots,  or 
for  such  moments  as  the  one  when  he  heard  of  the  fall  of 
Philadelphia  and  the  surrender  of  Burgoyne.  In  his 
purely  social  relations  with  the  French  People,  he  pre- 
served only  enough  of  his  republican  ideas,  dress  and  man- 
ners to  give  a  certain  degree  of  piquancy  to  his  ensemble. 


476       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

He  adopted  French  usages  and  customs; he  composed 
exquisite  little  stories  and  dialogues  in  the  French  manner, 
and,  old  as  he  was,  he  made  love  like  a  French  galant. 
"  As  it  is  always  fair  Weather  in  our  Parlours,  it  is  at 
Paris  always  Peace,"  he  wrote  to  the  Chevalier  de  la 
Luzerne,  and  this  remark  comes  home  to  us  with  full  force 
when  we  remember  with  what  unrestrained  gaiety  of 
heart,  notwithstanding  the  shudder  sent  through  him  at 
times  by  the  American  War,  he  enjoyed  the  social  life  of 
Paris.  Long  before  he  left  France,  he  had  learnt  to  love 
the  country  and  its  people  with  a  sincere,  fervent  attach- 
ment. After  saying  in  a  letter  to  Josiah  Quincy,  that  the 
French  had  certainly  advanced  in  politeness  and  civility 
many  degrees  beyond  the  English,  he  paid  them  this 
compliment : 

I  find  them  here  a  most  amiable  Nation  to  live  with.  The 
Spaniards  are  by  common  Opinion  suppos'd  to  be  cruel,  the 
English  proud,  the  Scotch  insolent,  the  Dutch  Avaricious, 
&c,  but  I  think  the  French  have  no  national  Vice  ascrib'd 
to.  them.  They  have  some  Frivolities,  but  they  are  harmless. 
To  dress  their  Heads  so  that  a  Hat  cannot  be  put  on  them, 
and  then  wear  their  Hats  under  their  Arms,  and  to  fill  their 
Noses  with  Tobacco,  may  be  called  Follies,  perhaps,  but  they 
are  not  Vices.  They  are  only  the  effects  of  the  tyranny  of 
Custom.  In  short,  there  is  nothing  wanting  in  the  Character 
of  a  Frenchman,  that  belongs  to  that  of  an  agreeable  and 
worthy  Man.  There  are  only  some  Trifles  surplus,  or  which 
might  be  spared. 

These,  however,  were  but  frigid  words  in  comparison 
with  those  subsequently  employed  by  him  in  relation  to 
a  country,  where,  to  use  his  own  language,  everybody 
strove  to  make  him  happy.  "The  French  are  an  amiable 
People  to  live  with,"  he  told  his  old  friend,  Captain 
Nathaniel  Falconer,  "They  love  me,  &  I  love  them."  In 
a  later  letter  to  William  Franklin,  he  said,  "I  am  here 


Franklin's  French  Friends  477 

among  a  People  that  love  and  respect  me,  a  most  amiable 
Nation  to  live  with;  and  perhaps  I  may  conclude  to  die 
among  them;  for  my  Friends  in  America  are  dying  off, 
one  after  another,  and  I  have  been  so  long  abroad,  that 
I  should  now  be  almost  a  Stranger  in  my  own  Country/' 
Nor  did  the  love  for  France  that  he  took  back  with 
him  to  the  United  States  grow  at  all  fainter  with  absence 
and  the  flow  of  time.  To  the  Due  de  la  Roche- 
foucauld he  wrote  from  Philadelphia,  "I  love  France,  I 
have  1000  Reasons  for  doing  so:  And  whatever  promotes 
or  impedes  her  Happiness  affects  me  as  if  she  were  my 
Mother."  To  Madame  Lavoisier  he  used  terms  that 
communicate  to  us  an  even  more  vivid  conception  of  the 
ambrosial  years  that  he  had  passed  in  France. 

These  [he  said,  referring  to  his  good  fortune  in  his  old  age 
in  its  different  aspects]  are  the  blessings  of  God,  and  depend 
on  his  continued  goodness;  yet  all  do  not  make  me  forget 
Paris,  and  the  nine  years'  happiness  I  enjoyed  there,  in  the 
sweet  society  of  a  people  whose  conversation  is  instructive, 
whose  manners  are  highly  pleasing,  and  who,  above  all  the 
nations  of  the  world,  have,  in  the  greatest  perfection,  the  art 
of  making  themselves  beloved  by  strangers.  And  now,  even 
in  my  sleep,  I  find,  that  the  scenes  of  all  my  pleasant  dreams 
are  laid  in  that  city,  or  in  its  neighbourhood. r 

Mingled  with  these  pleasant  dreams,  it  is  safe  to  say 
were  some  of  the  lively  and  charming  women  to  whose 
embraces  he  submitted,  if  his  sister  Jane  was  not  mis- 
informed, in  a  spirit  quite  remote  from  that  of  the  rigors 
of  penance. 

You  mention  the  Kindness  of  the  French  Ladies  to  me  [he 
wrote  to  Elizabeth  Partridge,  whose  husband  was  the  super- 
intendent of  the  almshouse  in  Boston],  I  must  explain  that 

1  In  a  letter  to  Count  de  Moustiers,  dated  Philadelphia,  Feb.  10,  1788, 
Franklin  termed  Louis  XVI.  and  France  "the  best  of  Kings  &  the  most 
beloved  of  Nations." 


478       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

matter.  This  is  the  civilest  nation  upon  Earth.  Your  first 
Acquaintances  endeavour  to  find  out  what  you  like,  and  they 
tell  others.  If  'tis  understood  that  you  like  Mutton,  dine 
where  you  will  you  find  Mutton.  Somebody,  it  seems,  gave 
it  out  that  I  lov'd  Ladies;  and  then  everybody  presented  me 
their  Ladies  (or  the  Ladies  presented  themselves)  to  be 
embraced,  that  is  to  have  their  Necks  kiss'd.  For  as  to 
kissing  of  Lips  or  Cheeks  it  is  not  the  Mode  here,  the  first,  is 
reckon'd  rude,  &  the  other  may  rub  off  the  Paint.  The 
French  Ladies  have  however  iooo  other  ways  of  rendering 
themselves  agreeable;  by  their  various  Attentions  and 
Civilities,  &  their  sensible  Conversation.  'Tis  a  delightful 
People  to  live  with. 

I  hope,  however  [he  wrote  to  another  correspondent  after 
denying  a  story  about  himself],  to  preserve,  while  I  stay,  the 
regard  you  mention  of  the  French  ladies ;  for  their  society  and 
conversation,  when  I  have  time  to  enjoy  them,  are  extremely 
agreeable. 

And  that  the  French  ladies  found  his  society  and  con- 
versation extremely  agreeable  no  one  can  well  doubt  who 
has  had  occasion  to  become  familiar  with  the  scented 
missives,  full  of  artful  coquetry,  that  were  addressed 
by  many  fair  hands  to  "  tres  cher  papa, "  or  "  Dear  Ameri- 
can papa"  or  "amiable  papa,"  when  he  was  in  the  land 
where  somebody  had  been  so  considerate  as  to  give  it  out 
that  he  liked  ladies.  At  times,  these  notes  run  along  in 
mingled  French  and  English  as  if  the  writers  were  deter- 
mined to  bring  to  bear  upon  him  the  blandishments  not 
only  of  the  former  language  but  of  his  own  familiar  tongue 
besides.  "Je  vous  envoye  a  sweet  kiss,  dear  Papa, 
envoyez  moi  en  revanche,  un  Mot  de  Reponse,"  was  one 
languishing  request.  Even  Franklin's  bad  French  mat- 
tered but  little  when  a  woman,  Madame  Brillon,  whom 
the  daughter  of  Abigail  Adams  pronounced  "one  of  the 
handsomest  women  in  France,"  could  write  to  him, 
"It  is  always  very  good  French  to  say,  'Je  vous  aime.' 


Franklin's  French  Friends  479 

My  heart  always  goes  out  to  meet  this  word  when  you 
say  it  to  me."  From  such  words  as  these  to  his  saying 
that  the  best  master  of  languages  is  a  mistress  the  transi- 
tion was  not  very  difficult. x 

It  was  at  Passy,  then  a  suburb  of  Paris,  that  Franklin 
resided  during  the  eight  and  a  half  years  that  he  was 
one  of  our  representatives  in  France.  His  surroundings 
were  thus  described  by  him  in  reply  to  a  question  from 
Mrs.  Stevenson: 

You  wish  to  know  how  I  live.  It  is  in  a  fine  House, 
situated  in  a  neat  Village,  on  high  Ground,  half  a  Mile  from 
Paris,  with  a  large  Garden  to  walk  in.  I  have  abundance 
of  Acquaintance,  dine  abroad  Six  days  in  seven.  Sundays 
I  reserve  to  dine  at  home,  with  such  Americans  as  pass  this 
Way;  and  I  then  have  my  grandson  Ben,  with  some  other 
American  Children  from  his  school. 

The  house  mentioned  by  Franklin  was  known  as  the 
Basse  Cour  de  Monsieur  Le  Ray  de  Chaumont,  and 
had  originally,  with  the  inscription  over  its  door,  "Se  sta 
bene,  non  si  muove"  not  been  unknown  to  fame  as  the 
H6tel  de  Valentinois.  Indeed,  John  Locke,  who  visited 
Paris  in  1679,  declared  that  it  was  among  the  twenty-four 
belles  maisons  in  Paris  that  best  rewarded  the  curiosity  of 
the  stranger  at  that  time.  The  circumstances,  under  which 
it  passed  into  the  possession  of  Franklin,  were  another 
proof  of  the  flaming  zeal  with  which  many  of  the  foremost 
inhabitants  of  France  espoused  the  cause  of  the  Colonies. 
Chaumont  was  Grand  Maitre  des  Eaux  et  Forets  de 
France  and  Intendant  Honoraire  des  Invalides,  a  friend 

1  Franklin  was  too  old  when  he  entered  upon  the  French  mission  to 
acquire  a  real  mastery  of  the  French  language.  On  one  occasion,  when 
at  the  theatre  with  Madame  de  Boufflers,  from  whom  he  took  his  cue  in 
helping  to  swell  the  plaudits  of  the  evening,  he  was  chagrined  to  find 
that  his  most  vigorous  applause  had  been  bestowed  on  flattering  allusions 
to  himself. 


480       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

of  the  Due  de  Choiseul,  and  a  man  of  large  wealth,  with  a 
chateau  on  the  Loire  as  well  as  the  mansion  at  Passy,  of 
which  the  building  occupied  by  Franklin  was  a  part. 
In  his  generous  enthusiasm  for  American  liberty,  he  de- 
clined a  post  in  the  French  Ministry,  offered  to  him  by 
Choiseul,  because  he  thought  that  by  declining  it  he  might 
be  a  more  useful  intermediary  between  America  and  the 
French  Government.  When  John  Adams  came  to  Passy, 
and  found  a  home  under  the  same  roof  with  Franklin,  he 
felt  obliged  to  write  to  Chaumont  asking  him  to  consider 
what  rent  they  should  pay  to  him  for  the  use  of  his  house 
and  furniture.  Every  part  of  Chaumont' s  conduct  to- 
wards him  and  Americans  in  general,  and  in  all  their 
affairs,  he  said,  had  been  polite  and  obliging,  as  far  as 
he  had  an  opportunity  of  observing,  and  he  had  no  doubt 
it  would  continue,  but  it  was  not  reasonable  that  they 
should  occupy  such  an  elegant  mansion  without  any 
compensation  to  the  owner,  and  it  was  not  right  that  they 
should  live  at  too  great  or  at  too  uncertain  an  expense  to 
their  constituents.  The  reply  of  Chaumont  was  worthy 
of  a  paladin  of  Ancient  France.  "When  I  consecrated 
my  home  to  Dr.  Franklin  and  his  associates  who  might 
live  with  him,"  he  said,  "I  made  it  fully  understood  that 
I  should  expect  no  compensation,  because  I  perceived 
that  you  had  need  of  all  your  means  to  send  to  the  succor 
of  your  country,  or  to  relieve  the  distresses  of  your  country- 
men escaping  from  the  chains  of  their  enemies."  This 
is  a  world,  however,  in  which  it  is  too  much  to  expect  an 
absolutely  free  gift  of  house  rent,  and  the  answer  of 
Chaumont  to  John  Adams  does  not  altogether  agree  with 
the  version  of  the  matter  given  by  Franklin  in  a  letter 
to  Robert  R.  Livingston,  in  which  he  said  that  Chaumont 
had  originally  proposed  to  leave  the  article  of  rent  un- 
settled until  the  end  of  the  war,  and  then  to  accept  for 
it  a  piece  of  American  land  from  the  Congress  such  as 
they  might  judge  equivalent.    Considering  the  serious  un- 


Franklin's  French  Friends  481 

certainty  as  to  whether  there  would  then  be  any  Congress, 
this  was  quite  generous  enough.  It  is  painful  to  relate, 
however,  that  Chaumont  engaged  so  recklessly  in  the 
hazardous  business  of  shipping  supplies  to  America  for  the 
patriot  army  as  to  become  involved  in  pecuniary  embar- 
rassments, which  produced  some  degree  of  temporary 
constraint  in  his  intercourse  with  Franklin.  "I  find  that 
in  these  Affairs  with  him,  a  Bargain  tho'  ever  so  clearly 
express' d  signifies  nothing,"  wrote  Franklin  in  a  moment 
of  disgust  with  his  volatility  to  Jonathan  Williams.  A 
few  months  before,  Franklin  had  made  this  entry  in  a 
journal  kept  by  him  during  a  brief  portion  of  his  residence 
at  Passy.  "Visit  at  M.  de  Chaumont' s  in  the  evening; 
found  him  cold  and  dry."  But  before  Franklin  left 
France,  the  old  cordiality  of  intercourse  appears  to  have 
been  fully  re-established,  for  we  find  the  two  dining  with 
each  other  again,  and  besides,  when  Franklin  was  on  his 
way  to  the  seacoast,  on  his  return  to  America,  Chaumont 
and  his  daughter  accompanied  him  part  of  the  way. 
The  entire  restoration  of  good  feeling  between  the  two 
men  is  also  shown  in  the  letters  and  conduct  of  Franklin 
after  his  return  to  America.  Chaumont  was  one  of  the 
group  of  French  friends  favored  by  him  with  gifts  of  the 
Franklin  Myrtle  Wax  Soap,  " thought,"  he  said,  "to  be 
the  best  in  the  World,  for  Shaving  &  for  washing  Chinees, 
and  other  things  of  delicate  Colours."  In  one  of  his 
letters  from  Philadelphia,  Franklin  tells  Chaumont  that 
Donatien  Le  Ray  Chaumont,  the  Younger,  who  had  come 
over  to  America  to  press  certain  claims  of  the  elder  Chau- 
mont against  the  United  States,  was  out  at  that  time  with 
his  "  son  Bache"  and  some  others  on  a  hunt.  It  is  in  this 
letter,  by  the  way,  that  he  said  of  Finck,  his  maitre 
d'  hotel  at  Passy,  who  was  pretending  that  he  was  not 
wholly  paid,  "He  was  continually  saying  of  himself, 
Je  suis  honnete  homme,  Je  suis  honn&te  homme.  But  I 
always  suspected  he  was  mistaken;  and  so  it  proves." 

VOL.    I— 31 


482       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

In  another  letter,  he  wrote  to  Chaumont,  "I  have  fre- 
quently the  Pleasure  of  seeing  your  valuable  Son,  whom  I 
love  as  my  own, "  and  in  this  letter  he  sent  his  love  to  all 
Chaumont's  children  in  France,  one  of  whom  he  was  in 
the  habit  of  addressing  as  "ma  femme,"  another  as 
"ma  chere  amie,"  and  still  another  as  "mon  enfant." 
"Present  my  affectionate  Respects  to  Madame  de  Chau- 
mont, and  Love  to  Made  Foucault,  to  ma  Femme,  ma 
chere  Amie,  et  mon  Enfant,"  was  one  of  his  messages 
to  Chaumont.  This  Madame  Foucault  was  the  favorite 
mentioned  by  William  Temple  Franklin,  when  he  wrote 
to  his  grandfather  some  nine  months  after  the  latter  found 
the  manner  of  Chaumont  "cold  and  dry,"  "All  the 
family  (the  Chaumonts)  send  their  love  to  you,  and  the 
beautiful  Me  Foucault  accompanys  hers  with  an  English 
kiss."  A'  challenge  of  that  kind  was  always  promptly 
caught  up  by  Franklin.  "Thanks  to  Made  Foucault," 
he  replied,  "for  her  kindness  in  sending  me  the  Kiss. 
It  was  grown  cold  by  the  way.  I  hope  for  a  warm  one 
when  we  meet." 

An  amusing  observation  of  Madame  Chaumont,  which 
has  its  value,  as  an  illustration  of  eighteenth-century 
manners  in  France,  is  quoted  in  a  letter  from  Franklin  to 
John  Paul  Jones : 

L'Abbe*  Rochon  had  just  been  telling  me  &  Madame  Chau- 
mont [wrote  Franklin]  that  the  old  Gardiner  &  his  Wife  had 
complained  to  the  Curate,  of  your  having  attack' d  her  in  the 
Garden  about  7  o'clock  the  evening  before  your  Departure, 
and  attempted  to  ravish  her  relating  all  the  Circumstances, 
some  of  which  are  not  fit  for  me  to  write.  The  serious  Part 
of  it  was  y*  three  of  her  Sons  were  determin'd  to  kill  you,  if 
you  had  not  gone  off;  the  Rest  occasioned  some  Laughing; 
for  the  old  Woman  being  one  of  the  grossest,  coarsest,  dirtiest 
&  ugliest  that  we  may  find  in  a  thousand,  Madame  Chaumont 
said  it  gave  a  high  Idea  of  the  Strength  of  Appetite  &  Courage 
of  the  Americans.     A  Day  or  two  after,  I  learnt  y*  it  was  the 


Franklin's  French  Friends  483 

femme  de  Chambre  of  Mademoiselle  Chaumont  who  had 
disguis'd  herself  in  a  Suit,  I  think,  of  your  Cloaths,  to  di- 
vert herself  under  that  Masquerade,  as  is  customary  the 
last  evening  of  Carnival :  and  that  meeting  the  old  Woman  in 
the  Garden,  she  took  it  into  her  Head  to  try  her  Chastity, 
which  it  seems  was  found  Proof. 

The  wit  of  Madame  de  Chaumont,  however,  shows  to 
better  advantage  in  connection  with  another  incident. 
One  of  Franklin's  friends  was  Mademoiselle  Passy,  a 
beautiful  girl,  whom  he  was  in  the  habit  of  calling,  so 
John  Adams  tells  us,  "his  favorite,  and  his  flame,  and  his 
love,"  which  flattered  the  family,  and  did  not  displease 
the  young  lady.  When  her  engagement  to  the  Marquis 
de  Tonnerre  was  announced,  Madame  de  Chaumont 
exclaimed  to  Franklin,  "Helas!  tous  les  conducteurs  de 
Monsieur  Franklin  n'ont  pas  emp£che  le  tonnerre  de 
tomber  sur  Mademoiselle  de  Passy."  Franklin  himself 
was  entirely  too  good  a  conductor  of  wit  not  to  pass  a 
thing  like  this  on. 

It  gives  me  great  Pleasure  Madam  my  respected  Neighbour, 
[he  said  in  a  letter  to  Madame  de  Boulainvilliers,  the  mother  of 
the  Semele  upon  whom  the  Marquis  was  about  to  descend] 
to  learn  that  our  lovely  Child  is  soon  to  be  married  with  your 
Approbation  &  that  we  are  not  however  to  be  immediately 
depriv'd  of  her  Company.  I  assure  you  I  shall  make  no 
Use  of  my  Paratonnerre  [lightning-rod]  to  prevent  this  Match. 

Franklin's  republican  simplicity  began  and  ended  with 
his  unpowdered  hair,  worn  straight,  and  covered  with  a 
cap  of  marten  fur,  and  his  russet  dress.  At  Passy,  he 
lived  in  a  manner  that  Vergennes,  accustomed  to  the 
splendor  and  profusion  of  European  Courts,  might  well  call 
modest,  but  which  was  quite  as  lavish  as  was  consistent 
with  the  reputation  of  a  plain  democrat  or  of  a  veritable 
philosopher.     Under  the  terms  of  his  contract  with  his 


484       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

maitre  d'hotel.  the  latter  was  to  provide  dejeuner  and  dinner 
daily  for  five  persons.  The  dejeuner  was  to  consist  of 
bread  and  butter,  honey,  and  coffee  or  chocolate  with 
sugar,  and  the  dinner  of  a  joint  of  beef,  or  veal  or  mutton, 
followed  by  fowl  or  game  with  "deux  plats  d'entremets, 
deux  plats  de  legumes,  et  un  plat  de  Patisserie,  avec  hors 
d'ceuvre,  de  Beurres,  cornichons,  radis,  etc."  For  des- 
sert, there  were  to  be  "deux  de  Fruit  en  hiver  et  4  en 
Ete."  There  were  also  to  be  at  dinner:  "Deux  com- 
pottes,  un  assiette  de  fromage,  un  de  Biscuits,  et  un  de 
bonbons,"  and  "Des  Glaces,  2  fois  par  Semaine  en  Ete 
et  un  fois  en  Hyver. ' '  The  cost  of  this  service  per  month 
was  720  livres.  There  was  also  an  allowance  of  240  livres 
per  month  for  nine  domestic  servants,  and  of  400  livres 
per  month  for  extra  dinners  for  guests;  making  the  total 
monthly  cost  of  Franklin's  table  1360  livres.  And  there 
was  no  lack  of  good  wine,  red  or  white,  ordinaire  or  extra- 
ordinaire. In  1778,  there  were  1 180  bottles  of  wine 
and  rum  in  the  cellar  at  Passy,  and,  some  four  and  one 
half  years  later,  there  were  1203.  Franklin  also  main- 
tained a  carriage  and  coachman  at  a  cost  of  5018  livres 
per  year.  By  a  resolution  of  Congress,  the  salaries  of  the 
different  Commissioners  of  the  United  States  in  Europe 
were  fixed  at  11,428  livres  tournois  per  annum,  in  addi- 
tion to  their  reasonable  expenses,  and  the  total  expenses 
of  Franklin  in  France  are  computed  by  Smyth  to  have 
been  about  $15,000  per  annum,  a  moderate  sum,  indeed, 
in  comparison  with  the  amount  necessary  to  sustain  the 
dignity  of  our  Minister'  to  France  at  the  present  time. 
Nevertheless,  the  menage  at  Passy  was  luxurious  enough 
for  him  to  be  warned  that  it  had  been  described  at  home 
by  some  of  his  guests  in  such  terms  as  to  provoke  popular 
censure  on  the  part  of  his  countrymen. 

They  must  be  contented  for  the  future  [Franklin  said  in 
a  letter  to  John  Adams]  as  I  am,  with  plain  beef  and  pudding. 


Franklin's  French  Friends  485 

The  readers  of  Connecticut  newspapers  ought  not  to  be  trou- 
bled for  any  more  accounts  of  our  extravagance.  For  my  own 
part,  if  I  could  sit  down  to  dinner  on  a  piece  of  excellent  salt 
pork  and  pumpkin,  I  would  not  give  a  farthing  for  all  the 
luxuries  of  Paris. 

After  this  time,  Franklin  did  not  keep  such  an  open 
house  as  before,  considerably  to  the  relief  of  his  gout. 
Previously,  if  we  may  believe  John  Adams,  he  had  made  a 
practice  of  inviting  everybody  to  dine  with  him  on  Sunday 
at  Passy.  Sometimes,  his  company  was  made  up  exclu- 
sively, or  all  but  exclusively,  of  Americans,  and  sometimes 
partly  of  Americans,  and  partly  of  French,  and,  now  and 
then,  there  wsls  an  Englishman  or  so.  Miss  Adams 
mentions  a  "sumptuous  dinner,"  at  which  the  members 
of  the  Adams  family,  the  Marquis  de  la  Fayette  and  his 
wife,  Lord  Mount  Morris,  an  Irish  Volunteer,  Dr.  Jeffries, 
and  Paul  Jones  were  guests.  Another  dinner  is  men- 
tioned by  her  at  which  all  the  guests  were  Americans, 
except  M.  Brillon,  who  had  dropped  in,  he  said,  "a  de- 
mander  un  dine  a  Pere  Franklin."  A  whimsical  story 
is  told  by  Jefferson  of  still  another  dinner  at  which  one 
half  of  the  guests  were  Americans  and  one  half  French. 

Among  the  last  [he  says]  was  the  Abbe*  (Raynal).  During 
the  dinner  he  got  on  his  favorite  theory  of  the  degeneracy  of 
animals,  and  even  of  men,  in  America,  and  urged  it  with  his 
usual  eloquence.  The  Doctor  at  length  noticing  the  accidental 
stature  and  position  of  his  guests,  at  table,  "Come,"  says  he, 
"M.  L'Abbe,  let  us  try  this  question  by  the  fact  before  us. 
We  are  here  one  half  Americans,  and  one  half  French,  and  it 
happens  that  the  Americans  have  placed  themselves  on  one 
side  of  the  table,  and  our  French  friends  are  on  the  other. 
Let  both  parties  rise,  and  we  will  see  on  which  side  nature  has 
degenerated."  It  happened  that  his  American  guests  were 
Carmichael,  Harmer,  Humphreys,  and  others  of  the  finest 
stature  and  form;  while  those  of  the  other  side  were  remark- 
ably diminutive,  and  the  Abbe  himself,  particularly,  was  a 


486       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

mere  shrimp.  He  parried  the  appeal,  however,  by  a  compli- 
mentary admission  of  exceptions,  among  which  the  Doctor 
himself  was  a  conspicuous  one. 

Not  the  least  interesting  of  the  guests  that  Franklin 
drew  around  his  table  at  Passy  were  lads,  who  had  a  claim 
upon  his  notice,  either  because  they  were  the  sons,  or 
grandsons,  of  friends  of  his,  or  because  they  were  friends 
of  his  grandson,  Benjamin  Franklin  Bache.  In  a  letter 
to  Doctor  Cooper,  Franklin  tells  him  that  his  grandson, 
Samuel  Cooper  Johonnot  appeared  a  very  promising 
lad,  in  whom  he  thought  that  the  doctor  would  have 
much  satisfaction,  and  was  well  on  the  preceding  Sunday, 
when  he  had  had  the  pleasure  of  his  company  to  dinner 
with  Mr.  Adams'  sons,  and  some  other  young  Ameri- 
cans. There  is  still  in  existence  a  letter  from  John  Quincy 
Adams,  then  a  boy  of  eleven,  to  Franklin,  which  indicates 
that  the  latter  had  quite  won  his  heart,  though,  do  what 
he  might,  he  could  never  win  the  heart  of  the  elder  Adams. 

It  was  a  brilliant  society,  to  which  Franklin  was  intro- 
duced, after  the  first  reserve  of  the  French  Court,  before 
its  recognition  of  American  independence,  was  laid  aside. 
He  had  the  magpie  habit  of  hoarding  every  scrap  of  paper 
or  cardboard,  that  bore  the  imprint  of  his  existence,  and 
Smyth,  the  latest  editor  of  Franklin's  works,  has,  with 
his  usual  diligence,  compiled  the  names  that  appear  most 
frequently  on  the  visiting  cards,  found  among  Franklin's 
papers.  They  are  such  significant  names  as  those  of  La 
Duchesse  d'Enville,  her  son  Le  Due  de  la  Rochefoucauld, 
M.  Turgot,  Due  de  Chaulnes,  Comte  de  Crillon,  Vicomte 
de  Sarsfield,  M.  Brisson,  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Sciences, 
Comte  de  Milly,  Prince  des  Deuxponts,  Comte  d'Estaing, 
Marquis  de  Mirabeau  and  M.  Beaugeard,  Treasurer 
of  the  State  of  Brittany. 

The  Diary  of  John  Adams  reveals  Franklin  and  himself 
dining  on  one  occasion  with  La  Duchesse  d'Enville,  and 


Franklin's  French  Friends  487 

"twenty  of  the  great  people  of  France,"  on  another  with 
M.  Chalut,  one  of  the  farmers-general,  and  the  old  Marshal 
Richelieu,  and  "a  vast  number  of  other  great  company," 
on  another  with  the  Prince  de  Tingry,  Due  de  Beaumont, 
of  the  illustrious  House  of  Montmorency,  and  on  another 
with  La  Duchesse  d'Enville,  along  with  her  daughter 
and  grand-daughter,  and  dukes,  abbots  and  the  like  so 
numerous  that  the  list  ends  with  a  splutter  of  et  ceteras. 
"Dukes,  and  bishops  and  counts,  etc."  are  the  over- 
burdened words  with  which  Adams  closes  his  list  of  the 
guests  at  a  dinner  given  by  Vergennes,  the  minister  of 
Louis  XVI. 

But,  after  all,  it  was  the  circle  of  intimate  friends,  to 
which  Franklin  promised  to  introduce  John  Jay  on  the 
arrival  of  Jay  in  France,  that  constitutes  the  chief  interest 
of  the  former's  social  life  in  France.  Three  of  these 
friends  were  Madame  Helvetius,  Madame  Brillon  and  the 
Comtesse  d'Houdetot.  With  Madame  Helvetius,  he 
dined  every  Saturday  at  Auteuil,  with  Madame  Brillon 
twice  a  week  at  the  home  of  her  husband,  not  far  from  his, 
and  with  the  Comtesse  d'Houdetot  frequently  at  Sanois, 
in  the  Valley  of  Montmorency.  Madame  Helvetius  was 
known  to  her  friends  as  "Our  Lady  of  Auteuil."  She 
was  the  widow  of  Helvetius,  the  philosopher,  who  had 
left  her  a  handsome  fortune,  amassed  by  him  when  one 
of  the  farmers-general.  In  testimony  of  her  affection  for 
him,  she  kept  under  glass,  on  a  table  in  her  bedroom,  a 
monument  erected  to  his  memory,  with  his  picture  hung 
above  it.  Her  salon  was  one  of  the  best-known  in  France, 
and  it  was  maintained  on  such  a  sumptuous  scale  that, 
in  one  of  his  letters,  after  his  return  to  America,  Franklin 
told  her  that  often  in  his  dreams  he  placed  himself  by  her 
side  on  one  of  her  thousand  sofas.  It  was  at  Auteuil 
that  he  passed  some  of  his  happiest  hours  in  France,  plying 
its  mistress  with  flattery  and  badinage,  and  enjoying  the 
music  of  her  two  daughters,  known  to  the  household  as 


4&8      Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

"the  Stars,"  and  the  conversation  of  her  friends,  the 
younger  Cabanis,  and  the  Abbes  Morellet  and  de  la  Roche. 
One  of  the  amusements  of  the  inner  circle  at  Auteuil  was 
to  read  aloud  to  each  other  little  trifles,  full  of  point  and 
grace  which  they  had  composed.  Thus,  though  after 
Franklin  had  returned  to  America,  was  ushered  into  the 
world  the  Abbe  Morellet 's  Very  Humble  Petition  to 
Madame  Helvetius  from  her  Cats — animals  which  ap- 
pear to  have  had  a  position  in  her  home  as  assured 
as  that  of  "the  Stars"  or  the  Abbes  themselves;  and 
several  of  the  wittiest  of  the  productions,  which  Franklin 
called  his  Bagatelles,  originated  in  the  same  way.  If 
homage,  seasoned  with  delightful  humor  and  wit,  could 
have  kept  the  mistress  of  Auteuil,  at  the  age  of  sixty, 
from  incurring  the  malice  of  the  female  contemporary, 
who,  we  are  told  by  Miss  Adams,  compared  her  with  the 
ruins  of  Palmyra,  that  of  Franklin  would  assuredly  have 
done  it.  When  she  complained  that  he  had  not  been 
to  see  her  for  a  long  time,  he  evaded  the  reproach  of  ab- 
sence by  replying,  "I  am  waiting,  Madame,  until  the 
nights  are  longer."  Whatever  others  might  think,  she 
was  to  him,  "his  fair  friend  at  Auteuil,"  who  still  pos- 
sessed "health  and  personal  charms."  What  cleverer 
application  could  there  be  than  this  of  the  maxim  of 
Hesiod  that  the  half  is  sometimes  more  than  the  whole : 

Very  dear  Friend,  we  shall  have  some  good  music  tomorrow 
morning  at  breakfast.  Can  you  give  me  the  pleasure  of  shar- 
ing in  it.  The  time  will  be  half  past  ten.  This  is  a  problem 
that  a  mathematician  will  experience  some  trouble  in  explain- 
ing; In  sharing  other  things,  each  of  us  has  only  one  portion; 
but  in  sharing  pleasures  with  you,  my  portion  is  doubled. 
The  part  is  more  than  the  whole. 

On  another  occasion,when  Madame  Helvetius  reminded 
Franklin  that  she  expected  to  meet  him  at  Turgot's,  he 
replied,  "Mr.  Franklin  never  forgets  any  party  at  which 


Franklin's  French  Friends  489 

Madame  Helvetius  is  expected.  He  even  believes  that, 
if  he  were  engaged  to  go  to  Paradise  this  morning,  he  would 
pray  for  permission  to  remain  on  earth  until  half -past 
one,  to  receive  the  embrace  promised  him  at  the  Turgots. " 
Poor  Deborah  seems  altogether  lost,  and  forgotten 
when  we  read  these  lines  that  he  wrote  to  the  Abbe  de 
la  Roche: 

I  have  often  remarked,  when  reading  the  works  of  M.  Hel- 
vetius, that,  although  we  were  born  and  reared  in  two  coun- 
tries so  remote  from  each  other,  we  have  frequently  had  the 
same  thoughts;  and  it  is  a  reflection  very  flattering  to  me 
that  we  have  loved  the  same  studies,  and,  as  far  as  we  have 
both  known  them,  the  same  friends,  and  the  same  woman. 

But  the  image  of  Deborah  was  not  so  completely 
effaced  from  Franklin's  memory  that  he  could  not  conjure 
up  her  shade  for  a  moment  to  excite  a  retaliatory  impulse 
in  the  breast  which  he  had  found  insensible  to  his  proposals 
of  marriage,  serious,  or  affected.  If  Madame  Helvetius, 
who  was  illiterate  like  Deborah,  did  not  appreciate  the 
light,  aerial  humor  of  the  following  dream  from  the  pen 
of  the  author  of  The  Art  of  Procuring  Pleasant  Dreams, 
we  may  be  sure  that  her  witty  Abbes  did : 

Mortified  by  your  cruel  resolution,  declared  by  you  so 
positively  yesterday  evening,  to  remain  single  the  rest  of  your 
life,  out  of  respect  for  your  dear  husband,  Iretired  to  my  home, 
threw  myself  upon  my  bed,  and  dreamt  that  I  was  dead  and 
in  the  Elysian  Fields. 

I  was  asked  whether  I  wished  to  see  any  persons  in  particu- 
lar. "Conduct  me  to  the  philosophers,"  I  replied.  /'There 
are  two  who  live  here  close  by  in  this  garden;  they  are  very 
good  neighbors  and  very  friendly  with  each  other,"  I  was 
told.  "Who  are  they?"  "Socrates  and  Helvetius."  "I 
esteem  them  both  immensely,  but  let  me  see  Helvetius  first, 
because  I  understand  a  little  French,  but  not  a  word  of  Greek." 
He  received  me  with  much  courtesy,  having  known  me,  he 
said,  by  reputation  for  some  time  past.     He  asked  me  a 


49°       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

thousand  questions  about  the  war,  the  present  state  of  religion, 
of  liberty,  and  politics  in  France.  "You  do  not  ask  me  then, " 
I  said,  "anything  about  your  dear  amie,  Madame  Helvetius; 
yet  she  loves  you  still  exceedingly,  and  I  was  at  her  home  only 
an  hour  ago."  "Ah,"  said  he,  "you  bring  back  to  me  my 
past  happiness,  but  it  must  be  forgotten  to  be  happy  here. 
During  several  of  my  first  years  here,  I  thought  only  of  her, 
but  at  length  I  am  consoled.  I  have  taken  another  wife, 
one  as  much  like  her  as  I  could  find.  She  is  not,  it  is  true, 
quite  so  handsome,  but  she  has  as  much  good  sense,  and 
much  esprit,  and  she  loves  me  infinitely.  Her  continuous 
aim  is  to  please  me,  and  she  is  at  this  moment  gone  to  look 
up  the  best  nectar  and  ambrosia  to  regale  me  with  this  even- 
ing; stay  here  awhile,  and  you  will  see  her."  "I  perceive," 
said  I,  "that  your  former  amie  is  more  faithful  than  you  are; 
for  she  has  had  several  good  offers,  but  has  refused  them  all. 
I  confess  that  I  myself  have  loved  her  to  distraction,  but  she 
was  obdurate,  and  has  rejected  me  peremptorily  for  love  of 
you."  "I  pity  your  misfortune,"  said  he,  "for  in  truth  she 
is  a  good  and  handsome  woman,  and  very  lovable."  "But 
are  not  the  Abbe*  de  la  R — and  the  Abbe  M — still  sometimes 
at  her  house?"  "Yes,  to  be  sure,  for  she  has  not  lost  a  single 
one  of  your  friends."  "If  you  had  induced  the  Abbe  M — 
(with  some  good  coffee  and  cream)  to  say  a  word  for  you,  you 
would,  perhaps,  have  succeeded;  for  he  is  as  subtle  a  reasoner 
as  Duns  Scotus  or  St.  Thomas;  he  marshals  his  arguments  in 
such  good  order  that  they  become  almost  irresistible.  And 
if  the  Abbe*  de  la  R —  had  been  induced  (by  some  fine  edition 
of  an  old  classic)  to  say  a  word  against  you,  that  would 
have  been  better;  for  I  have  always  observed  that  when  he 
advised  her  to  do  anything  she  had  a  very  strong  inclination 
to  do  the  reverse."  As  he  was  saying  this,  the  new  Madame 
Helvetius  entered  with  the  nectar,  and  I  recognized  her  in- 
stantly as  my  former  American  amie,  Mrs.  Franklin.  I  laid 
claim  to  her  but  she  said  to  me  coldly :  "I  was  a  good  wife  to 
you  for  forty-nine  years  and  four  months,  almost  a  half  cen- 
tury; be  content  with  that.  I  have  formed  a  new  connection 
here  which  will  last  to  eternity."  Indignant  at  this  refusal 
of  my  Eurydice,  I  at  once  resolved  to  quit  those  ungrateful 


Franklin's  French  Friends  491 

shades,  and  to  return  to  this  good  world,  and  to  gaze  again 
upon  the  sun  and  you.     Here  I  am;  let  us  avenge  ourselves. 

It  is  an  animated  picture,  too,  that  Franklin  strikes  off 
of  Our  Lady  of  Auteuil  in  a  letter  to  Cabanis,  when  the 
latter  had  been  absent  for  a  time  from  Auteuil : 

We  often  talk  of  you  at  Auteuil,  where  everybody  loves  you. 
I  now  and  then  offend  our  good  lady  who  can  not  long  retain 
her  displeasure,  but,  sitting  in  state  on  her  sopha,  extends 
graciously  her  long,  handsome  arm,  and  says  "la;  baisez  ma 
main:  Je  vous  pardonne, "  with  all  the  dignity  of  a  sultaness. 
She  is  as  busy  as  ever,  endeavoring  to  make  every  creature 
about  her  happy,  from  the  Abb6s  down  thro'  all  ranks  of 
the  family  to  the  birds  and  Poupon. 

Poupon  was  one  of  the  fair  lady's  eighteen  cats.  This 
letter  ends  with  the  request  that  Cabanis  present  to  his 
father  the  writer's  thanks  to  him  for  having  gotten  so 
valuable  a  son. 

A  lively  note  to  Cabanis  is  in  the  same  vein: 

M.  Franklin  risen,  washed,  shaved,  combed,  beautified  to 
the  highest  degree,  of  which  he  is  capable,  entirely  dressed, 
and  on  the  point  of  going  out,  with  his  head  full  of  the  four 
Mesdames  Helvetius,  and  of  the  sweet  kisses  that  he  pro- 
poses to  snatch  from  them,  is  much  mortified  to  find  the  pos- 
sibility of  this  happiness  being  put  off  until  next  Sunday. 
He  will  exercise  as  much  patience  as  he  can,  hoping  to  see  one 
of  these  ladies  at  the  home  of  M.  de  Chaumont  Wednesday. 
He  will  be  there  in  good  time  to  see  her  enter  with  that  grace 
and  dignity  which  charmed  him  so  much  seven  weeks  ago 
in  the  same  place.  He  even  plans  to  seize  her  there,  and  to 
keep  her  at  his  home  for  the  rest  of  her  life.  His  remaining 
three  Mesdames  Helvetius  at  Auteuil  can  suffice  for  the 
canaries  and  the  Abbes. 

Another  note  to  Cabanis  illustrates  how  readily 
pleasantry  of  this  kind  ran  in  the  eighteenth  century 
into  gross  license: 


492       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

M.  Franklin  is  sorry  to  have  caused  the  least  hurt  to  those 
beautiful  tresses  that  he  always  regards  with  pleasure.  If 
that  Lady  likes  to  pass  her  days  with  him,  he  would  like  as 
much  to  pass  his  nights  with  her;  and  since  he  has  already 
given  many  of  his  days  to  her,  although  he  had  such  a  small 
remnant  of  them  to  give,  she  would  seem  ungrateful  to  have 
never  given  him  a  single  one  of  her  nights,  which  run  con- 
tinually to  pure  waste,  without  promoting  the  good  fortune 
of  any  one  except  Poupon. 

When  the  reader  is  told  that  this  letter  ended  with  the 
words,  "  to  be  shown  to  our  Lady  of  Auteuil, "  his  mind  is 
not  unprepared  for  the  graphic  description  by  Abigail 
Adams  of  a  dinner  at  which  Madame  Helvetius  was  the 
central  figure: 

She  entered  the  room  with  a  careless,  jaunty  air;  upon 
seeing  ladies  who  were  strangers  to  her,  she  bawled  out,  ''Ah, 
mon  Dieu,  where  is  Franklin?  Why  did  you  not  tell  me 
there  were  ladies  here?"  You  must  suppose  her  speaking 
all  this  in  French.  "How  I  look!"  said  she,  taking  hold  of  a 
chemise  made  of  tiffany,  which  she  had  on  over  a  blue  lute- 
string, and  which  looked  as  much  upon  the  decay  as  her 
beauty,  for  she  was  once  a  handsome  woman;  her  hair  was 
frizzled;  over  it  she  had  a  small  straw  hat,  with  a  dirty 
gauze  half -handkerchief  round  it,  and  a  bit  of  dirtier  gauze 
than  ever  my  maids  wore  was  bowed  on  behind.  She  had  a 
black  gauze  scarf  thrown  over  her  shoulders.  She  ran  out 
of  the  room;  when  she  returned,  the  Doctor  entered  at  one 
door,  she  at  the  other;  upon  which  she  ran  forward  to  him, 
caught  him  by  the  hand,  "Helas!  Franklin;"  then  gave  him  a 
double  kiss,  one  upon  each  cheek,  and  another  upon  his  fore- 
head. When  we  went  into  the  room  to  dine,  she  was  placed 
between  the  Doctor  and  Mr.  Adams.  She  carried  on  the 
chief  of  the  conversation  at  dinner,  frequently  locking  her 
hands  into  the  Doctor's,  and  sometimes  spreading  her  arms 
upon  the  backs  of  both  the  gentlemen's  chairs,  then  throwing 
her  arm  carelessly  upon  the  Doctor's  neck. 

I  should  have  been  greatly  astonished  at  this  conduct,  if 


Franklin's  French  Friends  493 

the  good  Doctor  had  not  told  me  that  in  this  lady  I  should  see  a 
genuine  Frenchwoman,  wholly  free  from  affectation  or  stiffness 
of  behaviour,  and  one  of  the  best  women  in  the  world.  For 
this  I  must  take  the  Doctor's  word;  but  I  should  have  set  her 
down  for  a  very  bad  one,  although  sixty  years  of  age,  and  a 
widow.  I  own  I  was  highly  disgusted,  and  never  wish  for  an 
acquaintance  with  any  ladies  of  this  cast.  After  dinner,  she 
threw  herself  upon  a  settee,  where  she  showed  more  than  her 
feet.  She  had  a  little  lapdog,  who  was,  next  to  the  Doctor, 
her  favorite.  This  she  kissed,  and  when  he  wet  the  floor 
she  wiped  it  up  with  her  chemise.  This  is  one  of  the  Doctor's 
most  intimate  friends,  with  whom  he  dines  once  every  week, 
and  she  with  him.  She  is  rich,  and  is  my  near  neighbour;  but 
I  have  not  yet  visited  her.  Thus  you  see,  my  dear,  that 
manners  differ  exceedingly  in  different  countries.  I  hope 
however,  to  find  among  the  French  ladies  manners  more  con- 
sistent with  my  ideas  of  decency,  or  I  shall  be  a  mere  recluse. 

This,  of  course,  in  part,  was  but  the  New  England  snow- 
drop expressing  its  disapproval  of  the  full-blown  red  rose 
of  France,  but  it  is  impossible  for  all  the  pigments  in  the 
picture,  painted  by  the  skilful  hand  of  Abigail  Adams, 
to  have  been  supplied  by  the  moral  austerity  of  Puritan- 
ism. Miss  Adams,  we  might  add,  followed  up  her  mother's 
impression  with  a  prim  ditto  in  her  journal:  " Dined 
at  Mr.  Franklin's  by  invitation;  a  number  of  gentlemen 
and  Madame  Helvetius,  a  French  lady  sixty  years  of  age. 
Odious  indeed  do  our  sex  appear  when  divested  of  those 
ornaments,  with  which  modesty  and  delicacy  adorn  us." 
But  we  suspect  that  the  Doctor  was  right  in  saying  that 
Madame  Helvetius,  free  and  tawdry  as  she  seemed  to 
Abigail  Adams  and  her  daughter,  was  one  of  the  best 
women  in  the  world;  that  is  to  say  her  world.  We  are 
told  that,  when  she  was  convalescing  from  an  illness, 
four  hundred  persons  assembled  at  Auteuil  to  express  the 
pleasure  they  felt  at  the  prospect  of  her  recovery.  Be- 
neath the  noisy,  lax  manners,  which  Mrs.  Adams  deline- 


494       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

ates  so  mercilessly,  there  must  have  been  another  and  a 
very  different  Madame  Helvetius  to  have  won  such  a 
tribute  as  the  following  from  a  man  who  had  known 
what  it  was  to  be  tenderly  beloved  by  more  than  one 
pure,  thoroughly  refined  and  accomplished  woman: 

And  now  I  mention  your  friends,  let  me  tell  you,  that  I 
have  in  my  way  been  trying  to  form  some  hypothesis  to  ac- 
count for  your  having  so  many,  and  of  such  various  kinds.  I 
see  that  statesmen,  philosophers,  historians,  poets,  and  men 
of  learning  of  all  sorts  are  drawn  around  you,  and  seem 
as  willing  to  attach  themselves  to  you  as  straws  about  a  fine 
piece  of  amber.  It  is  not  that  you  make  pretensions  to  any 
of  their  sciences;  and  if  you  did,  similarity  of  studies  does  not 
always  make  people  love  one  another.  It  is  not  that  you  take 
pains  to  engage  them;  artless  simplicity  is  a  striking  part  of 
your  character.  I  would  not  attempt  to  explain  it  by  the  story 
of  the  ancient,  who,  being  asked  why  philosophers  sought  the 
acquaintance  of  kings,  and  kings  not  that  of  philosophers,  re- 
plied that  philosophers  knew  what  they  wanted*  which  was  not 
always  the  case  with  kings.  Yet  thus  far  the  comparison  may 
go,  that  we  find  in  your  sweet  society  that  charming  benevo- 
lence, that  amiable  attention  to  oblige,  that  disposition  to  please 
and  be  pleased,  which  we  do  not  always  find  in  the  society  of 
one  another.  It  springs  from  you;  it  has  its  influence  on  us 
all,  and  in  your  company  we  are  not  only  pleased  with  you, 
but  better  pleased  with  one  another  and  ourselves. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  friendship  between  the 
two  was  a  real,  genuine  sentiment.  When  Franklin  was 
doubting  whether  he  was  not  too  old  and  decrepit  to 
cross  the  Atlantic,  she  was  one  of  the  three  friends  who 
urged  him  to  spend  his  last  days  in  France,  and  live 
with  them.  It  was  hardly  fair,  therefore,  when  she 
exclaimed  after  the  departure  of  Franklin  from  France, 
in  the  presence  of  Madame  Brillon,  "Ah,  that  great  man, 
that  dear  man,  we  shall  see  him  no  more, "  for  Madame 
Brillon  to  retort,  "It  is  entirely  your  fault,  Madame." 


Franklin's  French  Friends  495 

From  Havre  he  sent  back  tender  farewells  to  his  "tr&s 
chere  amie."  They  were  awaiting,  he  said,  their  baggage 
and  fellow- voyager,  Mr.  Houdon,  the  sculptor.  "When 
they  come,  we  shall  quit  France,  the  country  of  the  world 
that  I  love  the  best;  and  I  shall  leave  there  my  dear 
Helvetia.  She  can  be  happy  there.  I  am  not  sure  of 
being  happy  in  America;  but  it  is  necessary  for  me  to  go 
there.  Things  seem  to  me  to  be  badly  arranged  here 
below,  when  I  see  beings  so  well  constituted  to  be  happy 
together  compelled  to  separate."  Then  after  a  message 
of  friendship  to  "the  Abbes  the  good  Abbes,"  the  vale 
dies  out  in  these  fond  words:  "I  do  not  tell  you  that 
I  love  you.  I  might  be  told  that  there  was  nothing 
strange  or  meritorious  in  that,  because  the  whole  world 
loves  you.  I  only  hope  that  you  will  always  love  me  a 
little." 

Nor  did  the  separation  worked  by  the  Atlantic  produce 
any  change  in  these  feelings.  In  the  letters  written  by 
Franklin  to  Madame  Helvetius,  and  the  members  of  her 
circle,  after  his  return  to  Philadelphia,  there  is  the  same 
spirit  of  affection  for  her  and  for  them,  as  well  as  a  wistful 
retrospect  of  his  chats  with  her  on  her  thousand  sofas, 
his  walks  with  her  in  her  garden,  and  the  repasts  at  her 
table,  always  seasoned  by  sound  sense,  sprightliness  and 
friendship.  One  of  his  commissions  seems  to  have  been 
to  obtain  a  cardinal  red  bird  for  the  "good  dame,"  as 
he  calls  her  in  a  letter  to  the  Abbe  Morellet  from  Phila- 
delphia. "The  good  Dame,  whom  we  all  love,  and 
whose  Memory  I  shall  love  and  honour  as  long  as  I  have 
any  Existence,"  were  his  words.  But  the  commission 
was  difficult  of  execution.  The  Virginia  cardinal,  he 
wrote  to  the  Abbe,  was  a  tender  bird  that  stood  the  sea 
but  poorly.  Several  sent  out  to  France  for  their  dame 
by  Mr.  Alexander,  in  his  tobacco  ships,  had  never  arrived, 
he  understood,  and,  "unless  a  Friend  was  going  in  the 
Ship  who  would  take  more  than  common  Care  of  them, " 


496       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

he  supposed,  "one  might  send  an  hundred  without  landing 
one  alive." 

They  would  be  very  happy,  I  know  [he  said],  if  they  were 
once  under  her  Protection;  but  they  cannot  come  to  her,  and 
she  will  not  come  to  them.  She  may  remember  the  Offer 
I  made  her  of  1,000  Acres  of  Woodland,  out  of  which  she 
might  cut  a  great  Garden  and  have  1,000  Aviaries  if  she 
pleased.  I  have  a  large  Tract  on  the  Ohio  where  Cardinals 
are  plenty.  If  I  had  been  a  Cardinal  myself  perhaps  I  might 
have  prevail' d  with  her. 

In  his  efforts  to  transport  the  Cardinal,  Franklin  even 
enlisted  the  services  of  Mr.  Paradise,  who,  if  contemporary 
gossip  is  reliable,  might  well  have  pleaded  the  preoccupa- 
tion imposed  upon  him  of  protecting  himself  from  the 
beak  of  his  own  termagant  wife.  Madame  Helvetius, 
however,  was  not  so  eager  for  a  cardinal  as  not  to  be 
willing  to  wait  until  one  could  be  brought  over  by  a  proper 
escort.  "  I  am  in  no  hurry  at  all, "  she  wrote  to  Franklin; 
" I  will  wait;  for  I  am  not  willing  to  be  the  death  of  these 
pretty  creatures.  I  will  wait."  In  this  same  letter, 
there  is  an  amusing  mixture  of  tenderness  and  banter. 
Declining  health  and  advancing  years,  she  said,  would 
but  enable  them  the  sooner  to  meet  again  as  well  as  to 
meet  again  those  whom  they  had  loved,  she  a  husband  and 
he  a  wife;  "but  I  believe,"  she  wipes  the  moisture  from 
her  eyes  long  enough  to  say,  "that  you  who  have  been  a 
rogue  (coquin)  will  be  restored  to  more  than  one." 

From  what  we  have  said,  it  is  plain  enough  that  the 
friendship  felt  by  Madame  Helvetius  for  the  Abbes 
Morellet  and  de  la  Roche  was  shared  by  Franklin.  When 
he  touched  at  Southampton,  after  leaving  Havre,  on  his 
return  to  America,  he  wafted  another  fond  farewell  to 
Madame  Helvetius;  "I  will  always  love  you,"  he  said, 
"think  of  me  sometimes,  and  write  sometimes  to  your 
B.  F."     This  letter,   too,  contained  the  usual  waggish 


Franklin's  French  Friends  497 

reference  to  the  Abbes.  "Adieu,  my  very,  very,  very 
dear  amie.  Wish  us  a  good  voyage,  and  tell  the  good 
Abbes  to  pray  for  us,  since  that  is  their  profession." 
The  Very  Humble  Petition  to  Madame  Helvetius  from 
her  Cats  was  long  ascribed  to  Franklin,  but  it  was 
really  written  by  the  Abbe  Morellet.  After  reading  it, 
Franklin  wrote  to  the  Abbe  that  the  rapidity,  with  which 
the  good  lady's  eighteen  cats  were  increasing,  would,  in 
time,  make  their  cause  insupportable,  and  that  their 
friends  should,  therefore,  advise  them  to  submit  volun- 
tarily either  to  transportation  or  castration.  How 
deeply  the  Abbe  Morellet  was  attached  to  Franklin  is 
feelingly  revealed  in  the  letters  which  he  wrote  to  him 
after  the  latter  had  arrived  safely  in  America;  to  say 
nothing  of  the  Abbe's  Memoirs. 

May  your  days  [he  wrote  in  one  of  these  letters]  be  pro- 
longed and  be  free  from  pain ;  may  your  friends  long  taste  the 
sweetness  and  the  charm  of  your  society,  and  may  those 
whom  the  seas*  have  separated  from  you  be  still  happy  in 
the  thought  that  the  end  of  your  career  will  be,  as  our  good 
La  Fontaine  says, ' '  the  evening  of  a  fine  day. ' ' 

Then,  after  some  political  reflections,  suggested  by 
the  liberal  institutions  of  America,  the  Abbe  indulges  in  a 
series  of  gay  comments  on  the  habit  that  their  Lady  of 
Auteuil  had,  in  her  excessive  love  of  coffee,  of  robbing 
him  of  his  share  of  the  cream,  on  the  vicious  bulldog 
brought  over  by  Temple  to  France  from  England  and  on 
the  host  of  cats,  that  had  multiplied  in  the  woodhouse  and 
woodyard  at  Auteuil,  under  the  patronage  of  their  mis- 
tress, and  did  nothing  but  keep  their  paws  in  their  furred 
gowns,  and  warm  themselves  in  the  sun.  Friends  of 
liberty,  these  cats,  the  Abbe  said,  were  entirely  out  of 
place  under  the  governments  of  Europe.  Nothing  could 
be  more  suitable  than  to  load  a  small  vessel  with  them 


VOL.    I — 32 


498       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

and  ship  them  to  America.  Another  letter  from  the  Abbe 
concluded  with  these  heartfelt  words: 

I  shall  never  forget  the  happiness  I  have  enjoyed  in  knowing 
you,  and  seeing  you  intimately.  I  write  to  you  from  Auteuil, 
seated  in  your  arm-chair,  on  which  I  have  engraved,  Benjamin 
Franklin  hie  sedebat,  and  having  by  my  side  the  little  bureau, 
which  you  bequeathed  to  me  at  parting,  with  a  drawer  full  of 
nails  to  gratify  the  love  of  nailing  and  hammering,  which  I 
possess  in  common  with  you.  But  believe  me,  I  have  no  need 
of  all  these  helps  to  cherish  your  endeared  remembrance,  and 
to  love  you, 

"Dura  memor  ipse  mei,  dum  spiritus  hos  reget  artus." 

During  their  jolly  intercourse  in  France,  the  Abbe 
Morellet  and  Franklin  touched  glasses  in  two  highly 
convivial  productions.  On  one  of  the  anniversaries  of 
the  birth  of  Franklin,  or  of  American  liberty,  the  Abbe 
could  not  remember  which,  the  Abbe  composed  a  drinking 
song  in  honor  of  Franklin,  and  among  the  letters  written 
by  Franklin  when  he  was  in  France  was  one  to  the  Abbe 
in  which  wine  is  lauded  in  terms  of  humorous  exaggera- 
tion. One  of  the  verses  of  the  Abbe's  production  refers 
to  the  American  War,  and  has  been  translated  in  these 
words  by  Parton: 

"Never  did  mankind  engage 
In  a  war  with  views  more  sage; 
They  seek  freedom  with  design, 
To  drink  plenty  of  French  wine; 
Such  has  been 
The  intent  of  Benjamin." 

The  other  verses  are  no  better  and  no  worse,  and  the 
whole  poem  is  even  more  inferior  in  wit  to  Franklin's 
letter  to  the  Abbe  than  the  Very  Humble  Petition  to 
Madame  Helvetius  from  her  Cats,  clever  though  it  be, 
is  to  Franklin's  Journey  to  the   Elysian  Fields,     If  we 


Franklin's  French  Friends  499 

had  nothing  but  these  bibulous  productions  to  judge 
by,  we  might  infer  that  love  of  wine,  quite  as  much  as 
love  of  Madame  Helvetius  was  the  tie  of  connection 
between  the  Abbe  Morellet  and  Franklin.  Indeed,  in 
the  letter  to  Franklin  with  respect  to  the  cats,  the  Abbe 
was  quite  as  candid  about  expressing  his  partiality  for 
one  form  of  spirits  as  Franklin  was  in  his  unblushing 
eulogy  of  wine.  He  did  not  know,  he  said,  what  duties 
his  cats,  in  the  unsettled  condition  of  the  commercial 
relations  between  France  and  the  United  States,  would 
be  made  to  pay  on  arriving  at  Philadelphia;  "and  then, " 
he  continued,  "if  my  vessel  should  find  nothing  to  load 
with  among  you  but  grain,  it  could  not  touch  at  our  islands 
to  take  in  sugar,  or  to  bring  me  back  good  rum  either, 
which  I  love  much." 

When  the  Abbe  de  la  Roche  made  a  gift  to  Franklin 
of  a  volume  of  Helvetius'  poems,  Franklin  was  quick  to 
give  him  a  recompense  in  the  form  of  a  little  drinking 
song  which  he  had  composed  some  forty  years  before. 
The  plan  of  this  poem  is  for  the  chorus,  whenever  the 
singer  dwells  upon  any  other  source  of  gratification,  to 
insist  so  vociferously  upon  friends  and  a  bottle  as  the 
highest  as  to  finally,  so  to  speak,  drown  the  singer  out. 

Thus: 

SINGER 

"Fair  Venus  calls;  her  voice  obey, 
In  beauty's  arms  spend  night  and  day. 
The  joys  of  love  all  joys  excel, 
And  loving's  certainly  doing  well. 

CHORUS 

"Oh!  no! 

Not  so ! 
•  For  honest  souls  know, 

Friends  and  a  bottle  still  bear  the  bell." 


500       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

In  a  letter  to  William  Carmichael,  enclosing  his  brilliant 
little  bagatelle,  The  Ephemera,  Franklin  described 
Madame  Brillon  in  these  terms: 

The  person  to  whom  it  was  addressed  is  Madame  Brillon, 
a  lady  of  most  respectable  character  and  pleasing  conversa- 
tion; mistress  of  an  amiable  family  in  this  neighbourhood, 
with  which  I  spend  an  evening  twice  in  every  week.  She 
has,  among  other  elegant  accomplishments,  that  of  an  excellent 
musician ;  and,  with  her  daughters,  who  sing  prettily,  and  some 
friends  who  play,  she  kindly  entertains  me  and  my  grand  son 
with  little  concerts,  a  cup  of  tea,  and  a  game  of  chess.  I  call 
this  my  Opera,  for  I  rarely  go  to  the  Opera  at  Paris. 

Madame  Brillon  was  the  wife  of  a  public  functionary 
much  older  than  herself,  who  yet,  as  her  own  letters  to 
Franklin  divulge,  did  not  feel  that  strict  fidelity  to  her 
was  necessary  to  soften  the  difference  in  their  ages. 

My  father  [she  wrote  on  one  occasion  to  Franklin],  marriage 
in  this  country  is  made  by  weight  of  gold.  On  one  end  of  the 
scale  is  placed  the  fortune  of  a  boy,  on  the  other  that  of  a  girl ; 
when  equality  is  found  the  affair  is  ended  to  the  satisfaction 
of  the  relatives.  One  does  not  dream  of  consulting  taste,  age, 
congeniality  of  character ;  one  marries  a  young  girl  whose  heart 
is  full  of  youth's  fire  and  its  cravings  to  a  man  who  has  used 
them  up;  then  one  exacts  that  this  woman  be  virtuous — 
my  friend,  this  story  is  mine,  and  of  how  many  others !  I  shall 
do  my  best  that  it  may  not  be  that  of  my  daughters,  but  alas, 
shall  I  be  mistress  of  their  fate  ? 

The  correspondence  between  Madame  Brillon  and 
Franklin  was  very  voluminous.  Among  the  Franklin 
papers  in  the  possession  of  the  American  Philosophical 
Society,  there  are  no  less  than  119  letters  from  her  to 
hi'm,  and  in  the  same  collection  there  are  also  the  rough 
drafts  of  some  of  his  letters  in  French  to  her.  More  than 
one  of  them  are  marked  with  corrections  by  her  hand. 


Franklin's  French  Friends  501 

Repeated  statements  of  hers  show  that  she  took  a  very 
indulgent  view  of  his  imperfect  mastery  of  the  French 
language.  When  he  sent  to  the  Brillons  his  French 
translation  of  his  Dialogue  between  the  Gout  and  M. 
Franklin,  she  returned  it  to  him,  "corrected  and  made 
worse  in  several  particulars  by  a  savant,  and  devoted  to 
destruction  by  the  critical  notes  of  a  woman  who  is  no 
savant, "  and  she  took  occasion  at  the  same  time  to  say: 

Your  dialogue  has  greatly  amused  me,  but  your  corrector 
of  French  has  spoiled  your  work.  Believe  me,  leave  your 
productions  as  they  are,  use  words  which  mean  something, 
and  laugh  at  the  grammarians  who  enfeeble  all  your  phrases 
with  their  purisms.  If  I  had  the  brains,  I  should  utter  a 
dire  diatribe  against  those  who  dare  to  touch  you  up,  even  if  it 
were  the  Abbe*  de  la  Roche,  or  my  neighbor  Veillard. 

And  after  reading  The  Whistle  of  Franklin,  she  wrote 
to  him,  "  M.  Brillon  has  laughed  heartily  over  the  Whistle : 
we  find  that  what  you  call  your  bad  French  often  gives  a 
piquant  flavor  to  your  narrative  by  reason  of  a  certain 
turn  of  phraseology  and  the  words  you  invent." 

It  may  well  be  doubted  whether  there  is  anything  more 
brilliant  in  literary  history  than  the  letters  which  make 
up  the  correspondence  between  Madame  Brillon  and 
Franklin,  and  the  marvel  is  that  the  intellectual  quality 
of  his  letters  should,  in  every  respect,  be  as  distinctly 
French  as  that  of  hers.  His  easy,  fleeting  touch,  his 
unflagging  vivacity,  his  wit,  his  fertility  of  invention, 
his  amative  coloring  are  all  as  thoroughly  French  as 
bonbons  or  champagne.  The  tame  domesticity  of  his 
forty-nine  years  of  sober  American  wedlock,  the  calm, 
well-regulated  flow  of  his  thoughts  and  habits  in  conserva- 
tive England,  under  the  roof  of  Mrs.  Stevenson,  and  at 
the  country  seat  of  the  "  Good  Bishop, "  the  Philosophy  of 
Poor  Richard,  the  Art  of  Virtue,  are  exchanged  for  a 
character  which,  except  when  a  suitable  match  was  to  be 


502       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

found  for  M.  Franklinet,  as  Madame  Brillon  called 
William  Temple  Franklin,  apparently  took  no  account 
of  anything  but  the  pursuit  of  pleasure,  as  pleasure  was 
pursued  by  the  people,  who  have,  of  all  others,  most 
nearly  succeeded  in  giving  to  it  the  rank  of  a  respectable 
divinity.  In  all  the  letters  of  Franklin  to  Madame 
Brillon,  there  is  not  a  sentiment  with  a  characteristic 
American  or  English  inflection  in  it.  How  far  his  ap- 
proaches to  the  beautiful  and  clever  wife  of  M.  Brillon 
were  truly  erotic,  and  how  far  merely  the  conventional 
courtship  of  a  gifted  but  aged  man,  who  had  survived 
everything,  that  belongs  to  passion  but  its  language,  it  is 
impossible  to  say.  We  only  know  that,  if  his  gallantry 
was  specious  merely,  he  maintained  it  with  a  degree  of 
pertinacity,  which  there  is  only  too  much  reason  to 
believe  might  have  had  a  different  issue  if  it  had  been 
more  youthful  and  genuine.  A  handsome,  talented 
Frenchwoman,  of  the  eighteenth  century,  burdened  with 
a  faithless  husband,  not  too  old  for  the  importunity  of  a 
heart  full,  to  use  her  own  expression,  of  youth's  fire  and 
cravings,  and  tolerant  enough  to  sit  on  an  admirer's 
knees,  and  to  write  responsive  replies  to  letters  from  him, 
accompanied  by  a  perpetual  refrain  of  sexuality,  would, 
to  say  the  least,  have  been  in  considerable  danger  of  for- 
getting her  marriage  vows  if  her  Colin  had  been  younger. 
As  it  was,  the  tenderness  of  Madame  Brillon  for  her  "  cher 
Papa"  appears  to  have  produced  no  results  worse  than  a 
series  of  letters  from  her  pen,  as  finished  as  enamel, 
which  show  that  in  every  form  of  defensive  warfare, 
literary  or  amorous,  she  was  quite  a  match  for  the  great 
man,  who  was  disposed  to  forget  how  long  he  had  lingered 
in  a  world  which  has  nothing  but  a  laugh  for  the  efforts 
of  December  to  pass  itself  off  as  May. 

"Do  you  know,  my  dear  Papa,"  she  wrote  to  him  on 
one  occasion,  "that  people  have  criticized  my  pleasant 
habit  of  sitting  on  your  lap,  and  yours  of  asking  me  for 


Franklin's  French  Friends  503 

what  I  always  refuse?"  In  this  world,  she  assured  him, 
she  would  always  be  a  gentle  and  virtuous  woman,  and  the 
most  that  she  would  promise  was  to  be  his  wife  in  Paradise, 
if  he  did  not  ogle  the  maidens  there  too  much  while 
waiting  for  her. 

When  the  hardy  resolution  is  once  formed  of  reviewing 
the  correspondence  between  Franklin  and  Madame 
Brillon,  the  most  difficult  task  is  that  of  compression. 

What!  [she  wrote  to  "Monsieur  Papa"  from  Nice,  after 
the  capitulation  of  Cornwallis]  You  capture  entire  armies  in 
America,  you  burgoinise  Cornwallis,  you  take  cannon,  vessels, 
munitions  of  war,  men,  horses,  etc.,  etc.  you  capture  every- 
thing and  from  everybody,  and  the  gazette  alone  brings  it  to 
the  knowledge  of  your  friends,  who  befuddle  themselves  with 
drinking  to  your  health,  to  that  of  Washington,  of  Indepen- 
dence, of  the  King  of  France,  of  the  Marquis  de  la  Fayette, 
of  the  Mrs:  de  Rochambault,  Chalelux  etc.,  etc.  while  you  do 
not  exhibit  a  sign  of  life  to  them;  yet  you  should  be  a  bon 
vivant  at  this  time,  although  you  rarely  err  in  that  respect, 
and  you  are  surely  twenty  years  younger  because  of  this  good 
news,  which  ought  to  bring  us  a  lasting  peace  after  a  glorious 
war. 

To  this  letter,  Franklin  replied  on  Christmas  Day  of 
the  year  1781,  the  birthday  of  the  Dauphin  of  Heaven, 
he  called  it  in  the  letter.  He  was  very  sensible,  he  said, 
to  the  greatness  of  their  victory,  but  war  was  full  of  vicissi- 
tudes and  uncertainty,  and  he  played  its  game  with  the 
same  evenness  of  temper  that  she  had  seen  him  bring  to 
the  good  and  bad  turns  of  a  game  of  chess.  That  was 
why  he  had  said  so  little  of  the  surrender,  and  had  only 
remarked  that  nothing  could  make  him  perfectly  happy 
under  certain  circumstances.  The  point,  of  course,  was 
that  still  another  capitulation  was  essential  to  his  happi- 
ness. He  then  proceeds  to  tell  Madame  Brillon  that, 
everywhere  from  Paris  to  Versailles,  everyone  spoke  of 


504       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

her  with  respect,   and  some  with  affection  and  even 
admiration;  which  was  music  to  his  ears. 

I  often  pass  before  your  house  [he  adds].  It  wears  a  deso- 
late look  to  me.  Heretofore,  I  have  broken  the  commandment 
in  coveting  it  along  with  my  neighbour's  wife.  Now  I  do  not 
covet  it.  Thus  I  am  the  less  a  sinner.  But  with  regard  to 
the  wife,  I  always  find  these  commandments  very  inconvenient, 
and  I  am  sorry  that  we  are  cautioned  to  practise  them.  Should 
you  find  yourself  in  your  travels  at  the  home  of  St.  Peter, 
ask  him  to  recall  them,  as  intended  only  for  the  Jews,  and  as 
too  irksome  for  good  Christians. 

These  specimens  are  true  to  the  language  of  the  entire 
correspondence,  but  further  excerpts  from  it  will  not  be 
amiss  for  the  purpose  of  enabling  us  to  realize  how  agree- 
able the  flirtation  between  the  two  must  have  been  to 
have  produced  such  a  lengthy  correspondence  despite 
the  fact  that  Franklin  visited  Madame  Brillon  at  least 
every  Wednesday  and  Saturday. 

On  Nov.  2,  1778,  she  wrote  to  Franklin  as  follows: 

The  hope  that  I  had  of  seeing  you  here,  my  dear  Papa, 
has  kept  me  from  writing  to  you  for  Saturday's  tea.  Hope  is 
the  remedy  for  all  our  ills.  If  one  suffers,  one  hopes  for  the 
end  of  the  trouble ;  if  one  is  with  friends,  one  hopes  to  remain 
with  them  always;  if  one  is  away  from  them,  one  hopes  to 
rejoin  them, — and  this  is  the  only  hope  that  is  left  to  me. 
I  shall  count  the  days,  the  hours,  the  moments;  each  moment 
gone  brings  me  nearer  to  you.  We  like  to  grow  older  when 
it  is  the  only  means  of  reuniting  us  to  those  whom  we  love. 
The  person,  who  takes  life  thus,  seeks  unceasingly  to  shorten 
it;  he  plans,  desires;  without  the  future,  it  seems  to  him  that 
he  has  nothing.  When  my  children  are  grown  up — in  ten 
years — the  trees  in  my  garden  will  shade  me.  The  years 
slip  by,  then  one  regrets  them.  I  might  have  done  such 
and  such  a  thing,  one  says  then.  Had  I  not  been  only  twent}'- 
five  years  old,  I  should  not  have  done  the  foolish  thing  of 


Franklin's  French  Friends  5°5 

which  I  now  repent.  The  wise  man  alone  enjoys  the  present, 
does  not  regret  the  past,  and  awaits  peacefully  the  future. 
The  wise  man,  who,  like  you,  my  Papa,  has  passed  his  youth 
in  acquiring  knowledge  and  enlightening  his  fellowmen,  and 
his  mature  years  in  obtaining  liberty  for  them,  brings  a  com- 
plaisant eye  to  bear  on  the  past,  enjoys  the  present,  and  awaits 
the  reward  of  his  labors  in  the  future;  but  how  many  are 
wise?  I  try  to  become  so,  and  am  so  in  some  respects:  I 
take  no  account  of  wealth,  vanity  has  little  hold  upon  my  heart ; 
I  like  to  do  my  duty;  I  freely  forgive  society  its  errors  and 
injustices.  ""  But  I  love  my  friends  with  an  idolatry  that  often 
does  me  much  harm:  a  prodigious  imagination,  a  soul  of  fire 
will  always  get  the  better  of  all  my  plans  and  thoughts.  I 
see,  Papa,  that  I  must  never  lay  claim  to  any  but  the  one  per- 
fection of  loving  the  most  that  is  possible.  May  this  quality 
make  you  love  your  daughter  always !  .  .  .  Come,  you  always 
know  how  to  combine  a  great  measure  of  wisdom  with  a 
touch  of  roguishness;  you  ask  Brillon  for  news  of  me  at  the 
very  moment  when  you  are  receiving  a  letter  from  me;  you 
play  the  part  of  the  neglected  one,  just  when  you  are  being 
spoiled,  and  then  you  deny  it  like  a  madman  when  the  secret 
is  discovered.     Oh,  I  have  news  of  you! 

...  Mama,  my  children,  and  Mile.  Jupin  present  their 
respects  to  you.  May  I  venture  to  beg  you  to  give  my  kind 
regards  to  Mr.  Franklinet? 

Another  letter  in  the  same  vein  from  Madame  Brillon 
to  Franklin  bears  date  May  II,  1779: 

You  are  quite  right,  my  good  Papa,  we  should  find  true 
happiness  only  in  peace  of  mind;  it  is  not  in  our  power  to 
change  the  nature  of  those  with  whom  we  live,  nor  to  check 
the  course  of  the  contradictions  that  surround  us.  It  is  a 
wise  man  who  speaks,  and  who  tries  to  comfort  his  too  sensitive 
daughter  by  telling  her  the  truth.  Oh,  my  father,  I  beseech 
your  friendship,  your  healthy  philosophy;  my  heart  hears 
you  and  is  submissive  to  you.  Give  me  strength  to  take  the 
place  of  an  indifference  that  your  child  can  never  feel.  But 
admit,  my  friend,  that  for  one  who  knows  how  to  love,  in- 


506       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

gratitude  is  a  frightful  misfortune ;  that  it  is  hard  for  a  woman 
who  would  give  her  life  without  hesitation  to  insure  her 
husband's  happiness  to  see  the  results  of  her  exertions  and  her 
longings  wiped  out  by  intrigue,  and  falsity.  Time  will  make 
everything  right;  my  Papa  has  said  so,  and  I  believe  it.  But 
my  Papa  has  also  said  that  time  is  the  stuff  that  life  is  made 
of.  My  life,  my  friend,  is  made  of  a  fine  and  thin  stuff,  that 
grief  rends  cruelly;  if  I  had  anything  to  reproach  myself  with, 
I  should  long  have  ceased  to  exist.  My  soul  is  pure,  simple, 
frank.  I  dare  to  tell  my  Papa  so;  I  dare  to  tell  him  that  it  is 
worthy  of  him;  I  dare  still  to  assure  him  that  my  conduct, 
which  he  has  deemed  wise,  will  not  belie  itself,  that  I  shall 
await  justice  with  patience,  that  I  shall  follow  the  advice  of 
my  worthy  friend  with  steadiness  and  confidence. 

Adieu,  you  Whom  I  love  so  much — my  kind  Papa.  Never 
call  me  anything  but  ''my  daughter."  Yesterday  you  called 
me  "Madame,"  and  my  heart  shrank,  I  examined  myself,  to 
see  whether  I  had  done  you  any  wrong,  or  if  I  had  some 
failings  that  you  would  not  tell  me  of.  Pardon,  my  friend; 
I  am  not  visiting  you  with  a  reproach,  I  am  accusing  myself 
of  a  weakness.  I  was  born  much  too  sensitive  for  my  happi- 
ness and  for  that  of  my  friends;  cure  me,  or  pity  me;  if  you 
can,  do  one  or  the  other. 

Tomorrow,  Wednesday,  you  will  come  to  tea,  will  you  not  ? 
Believe  me,  my  Papa,  that  the  pleasure  I  feel  in  receiving  you 
is  shared  by  my  husband,  my  children,  and  my  friends;  I 
cannot  doubt  it,  and  I  assure  you  of  it. 

Franklin's  reply  to  this  letter  is  for  a  brief  moment  that 
of  a  real  father  rather  than  Monsieur  Papa.  This  reminds 
us  that,  in  one  of  her  letters  to  him,  she  states  that  in  her 
own  father  she  had  lost  her  first  and  best  friend,  and 
recalled  the  fact  that  Franklin  had  told  her  of  the  custom 
of  certain  savages,  who  adopt  the  prisoners,  that  they 
capture  in  war,  and  make  them  take  the  place  of  the 
relations  whom  they  have  lost.  In  answer  to  her  state- 
ment that  ingratitude  is  a  frightful  misfortune,  he  says: 
"That  is  true — to  ingrates — but  not  to  their  benefactors. 


Franklin's  French  Friends  507 

You  have  conferred  benefits  on  those  that  you  have 
believed  worthy  of  them;  you  have,  therefore,  done  your 
duty,  as  it  is  a  part  of  our  duty  to  be  kindly,  and  you 
ought  to  be  satisfied  with  that  and  happy  in  the  reflec- 
tion." This  was  followed  by  the  advice  to  his  ''very  dear 
and  always  lovable  daughter"  to  continue  to  fulfill  all 
her  duties  as  a  good  mother,  a  good  wife,  a  good  friend, 
a  good  neighbor,  a  good  Christian,  etc.  We  shall  see  a 
little  later  on  what  he  deemed  a  part  of  the  duty  of  a  good 
charitable  Christian  to  be.  The  letter  terminates  with  an 
apology  for  his  bad  French.  " It  may, "  he  said,  "disgust 
you,  you  who  write  that  charming  language  with  so  much 
purity  and  elegance.  But,  if  you  can  in  the  end  decipher 
my  awkward  and  improper  expressions,  you  will,  at  least, 
perhaps,  experience  the  kind  of  pleasure  that  we  find  in 
solving  enigmas  or  discovering  secrets." 

His  letter  transmitting  his  Dialogue  with  the  Gout  to 
Madame  Brillon  was  not  so  decorous.  It  was  in  it  that 
he  had  a  word  to  say  about  the  other  kind  of  Christian 
conduct  that  he  was  in  the  habit  of  enjoining  upon  her. 
A  part  of  this  letter  was  the  following: 

One  of  the  characters  in  your  story,  namely,  the  Gout 
appeared  to  me  to  reason  well  enough,  with  the  exception  of 
his  supposition  that  mistresses  have  had  something  to  do 
with  producing  this  painful  malady.  I  myself  believe  the 
entire  contrary,  and  this  is  my  method  of  reasoning.  When 
I  was  a  young  man,  and  enjoyed  the  favors  of  the  sex  more 
freely  than  at  present,  I  had  no  gout.  Therefore,  if  the  ladies 
of  Passy  had  had  more  of  that  kind  of  Christian  charity,  that 
I  have  often  recommended  to  you  in  vain,  I  would  not  have 
the  gout  at  present.     This  seems  to  me  to  be  good  logic. 

I  am  much  better.  I  suffer  little  pain,  but  I  am  very  feeble. 
I  can,  as  you  see,  joke  a  little,  but  I  cannot  be  really  gay 
before  I  hear  that  your  precious  health  is  re-established. 

I  send  you  my  Dialogue  in  the  hope  that  it  may  amuse  you 
at  times. 


508       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Many  thanks  for  the  three  last  volumes  of  Montaigne 
that  I  return. 

The  visit  of  your  ever  lovable  family  yesterday  evening  has 
done  me  much  good.  My  God!  how  I  love  them  all  from  the 
Grandmother  and  the  father  to  the  smallest  child. 

The  reply  of  Madame  Brillon  was  in  kindred  terms: 

Saturday,  18th  November,  1780. 

There  would  be  many  little  things  indeed  to  criticise  in 
your  logic,  which  you  fortify  so  well,  my  dear  Papa.  "When 
I  was  a  young  man, "  you  say,  "and  enjoyed  the  favors  of  the 
sex  more  freely  than  at  present,  I  had  no  gout."  "There- 
fore, "  one  might  reply  to  this,  "when  I  threw  myself  out  of  the 
window,  I  did  not  break  my  leg."  Therefore,  you  could  have 
the  gout  without  having  deserved  it,  and  you  could  have  well 
deserved  it,  as  I  believe,  and  not  have  had  it. 

If  this  last  argument  is  not  so  brilliant  as  the  others,  it 
is  clear  and  sure;  what  is  neither  clear  nor  sure  are  the  argu- 
ments of  philosophers  who  insist  that  everything  that  happens 
in  the  world  is  necessary  to  the  general  movement  of  the 
universal  machine.  I  believe  that  the  machine  would  go 
neither  better  nor  worse  if  you  did  not  have  the  gout,  and  if  I 
were  forever  rid  of  my  nervous  troubles. 

I  do  not  see  what  help,  more  or  less,  these  little  incidents 
can  give  to  the  wheels  that  turn  this  world  at  random,  and  I 
know  that  my  little  machine  goes  very  much  the  worse  for 
them.  What  I  know  very  well  besides,  is  that  pain  sometimes 
becomes  mistress  of  reason,  and  that  patience  alone  can  over- 
come these  two  nuisances.  I  have  as  much  of  it  as  I  can,  and 
I  advise  you,  my  friend,  to  have  the  same  amount.  When 
frosts  have  cast  a  gloom  over  the  earth,  a  bright  sun  makes  us 
forget  them.  We  are  in  the  midst  of  frosts,  and  must  wait 
patiently  for  this  bright  sun,  and,  while  waiting  for  it,  amuse 
ourselves  in  the  moments  when  weakness  and  pain  leave  us 
some  rest.     This,  my  dear  Papa,  is  my  logic.  .  .  . 

Adieu,  my  good  Papa.  My  big  husband  will  take  my  letter 
to  you ;  he  is  very  happy  to  be  able  to  go  to  see  you.  For  me, 
nothing  remains  but  the  faculty  of  loving  my  friends.     You 


Franklin's  French  Friends  509 

surely  do  not  doubt  that  I  shall  do  my  best  for  you,  even  to 
Christian  charity,  that  is  to  say,  with  the  exception  of  your 
Christian  charity. 

She  writes  a  brief  letter  to  Franklin  on  New  Year's 
Day  of  1781 : 

If  I  had  a  good  head  and  good  legs — if,  in  short,  I  had 
everything  that  I  lack, — I  should  have  come,  like  a  good 
daughter,  to  wish  a  happy  New  Year  to  the  best  of  papas. 
But  I  have  only  a  very  tender  heart  to  love  him  well,  and  a 
rather  bad  pen  to  scribble  him  that  this  year,  as  well  as  last 
year,  and  all  the  years  of  my  life,  I  shall  love  him,  myself 
alone,  as  much  as  all  the  others  that  love  him,  put  together. 

Brillon  and  the  children  present  their  respects  to  the  kind 
Papa;  and  we  also  send  a  thousand  messages  for  M.  Franklinet. 

Some  four  years  later,  after  Franklin  had  vainly  en- 
deavored to  marry  Temple  Franklin  to  a  daughter  of 
Madame  Brillon,  we  find  him  writing  a  letter  of  con- 
gratulation to  her  upon  the  happy  accouchement  of  her 
daughter.  It  elicits  a  reply  in  which  the  cheek  of  the 
"beautiful  and  benignant  nature,"  of  which  she  speaks, 
undergoes  a  considerable  amount  of  artificial  coloring. 

2nd  December,  1784. 

Your  letter,  my  kind  Papa,  has  given  me  keen  pleasure; 
but,  if  you  would  give  me  still  more,  remain  in  France  until 
you  see  my  sixth  generation.  I  only  ask  you  for  fifteen  or 
sixteen  years:  my  granddaughter  will  be  marriageable  early; 
she  is  fair  and  strong.  I  am  tasting  a  new  feeling,  my  good 
Papa,  to  which  my  heart  surrenders  itself  with  pleasure,  it  is  so 
sweet  to  love.  I  have  never  been  able  to  conceive  how  beings 
exist  who  are  such  enemies  to  themselves  as  to  reject  friend- 
ship. They  are  ingrates,  we  say;  well  we  are  deceived;  that 
is  a  little  hard  sometimes,  but  we  are  not  always  so;  and  to  feel 
oneself  incapable  of  returning  the  treachery  affords  a  satis- 
faction of  itself  that  consoles  us  for  it. 


510       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

My  little  nurse  is  charming  and  fresh  as  a  morning  rose. 
The  first  days  the  child  had  difficulty,  .  .  .  but  patience  and 
the  mother's  courage  overcame  it;  all  goes  well  now,  and 
nothing  could  be  more  interesting  than  this  picture  of  a  young 
and  pretty  person  nursing  a  superb  child,  the  father  un- 
interruptedly occupied  with  the  spectacle,  and  joining  his 
attentions  to  those  of  his  wife.  My  eyes  are  unceasingly 
moist,  and  my  heart  rejoices,  my  kind  Papa.  You  realize 
so  well  the  value  of  all  that  belongs  to  beautiful  and  benignant 
nature  that  I  owe  you  these  details.  My  daughter  charges 
me  with  her  thanks  and  compliments  to  you;  ma  Cadette 
and  my  men  present  their  regards,  and  as  for  me,  my  friend, 
I  beg  you  to  believe  that  my  friendship  and  my  existence  will 
always  be  one  as  respects  you. 

Once  Franklin  sought  to  corner  Madame  Brillon  with  a 
story,  which  makes  us  feel  for  a  moment  as  if  the  rod  of 
transformation  was  beginning  to  work  a  backward  spell, 
and  the  Benjamin  Franklin  of  Craven  Street  and  Indepen- 
dence Hall  to  be  released  from  the  spell  of  the  French 
Circe : 

To  make  you  better  realize  the  force  of  my  demonstration 
that  you  do  not  love  me,  I  commence  with  a  little  story : 

A  beggar  asked  a  rich  Bishop  for  a  louis  by  way  of  alms. 
You  are  wild.  No  one  gives  a  louis  to  a  beggar.  An  ecu  then. 
No.  That  is  too  much.  A  Hard  then, — or  your  benediction. 
My  benediction !  Yes,  I  will  give  it  to  you.  No,  I  will  not  ac- 
cept it.  For  if  it  was  worth  a  Hard,  you  would  not  be  willing  to 
give  it  to  me.  That  was  how  this  Bishop  loved  his  neighbor. 
That  was  his  charity!  And,  were  I  to  scrutinize  yours,  I 
would  not  find  it  much  greater.  I  am  incredibly  hungry 
for  it  and  you  have  given  me  nothing  to  eat.  I  was  a  stranger, 
and  I  was  almost  as  love-sick  as  Colin  when  you  were  singing, 
and  you  have  neither  taken  me  in,  nor  cured  me,  nor  eased  me. 

You  who  are  as  rich  as  an  Archbishop  in  all  the  Christian 
and  moral  virtues,  and  could  sacrifice  a  small  share  of  some  of 
them  without  visible  loss,  you  tell  me  that  it  is  asking  too 
much,  and  that  you  are  not  willing  to  do  it.     That  is  your 


Franklin's  French  Friends  511 

charity  to  a  poor  wretch,  who  once  enjoyed  affluence,  and  is 
unfortunately  reduced  to  soliciting  alms.  Nevertheless,  you 
say  you  love  him.  But  you  would  not  give  him  your  friend- 
ship if  it  involved  the  expenditure  of  the  least  little  morsel, 
of  the  value  of  a  Hard,  of  your  wisdom. 

But  see  how  nimbly  the  coquette  eludes  her  pursuer : 

My  dear  Papa:  Your  bishop  was  a  niggard  and  your 
beggar  a  queer  enough  fellow.  You  are  a  logician  all  the 
cleverer  because  you  argue  in  a  charming  way,  and  almost 
awaken  an  inclination  to  yield  to  your  unsound  arguments 
founded  on  a  false  principle.  Is  it  of  Dr.  Franklin,  the  cele- 
brated philosopher,  the  profound  statesman,  that  a  woman 
speaks  with  so  much  irreverence  ?  Yes,  this  erudite  man,  this 
legislator,  has  his  infirmities  (it  is  the  weakness,  moreover,  of 
great  men:  he  has  taken  full  advantage  of  it).  But  let  us  go 
into  the  matter. 

To  prove  that  I  do  not  love  you,  my  good  Papa,  you  com- 
pare yourself  to  a  beggar  who  asked  alms  from  a  bishop.  Now, 
the  role  of  a  bishop  is  not  to  refuse  to  give  to  beggars  when 
they  are  really  in  want;  he  honors  himself  in  doing  good. 
But  in  truth  the  kind  of  charity  which  you  ask  of  me  so 
amusingly  can  be  found  everywhere.  You  will  not  grow  thin 
because  of  my  refusals!  What  would  you  think  of  your 
beggar,  if,  the  bishop  having  given  him  the  "louis"  which  he 
asked,  he  had  grumbled  because  he  did  not  get  two?  That, 
however,  is  your  case,  my  good  friend. 

You  adopted  me  as  your  daughter,  I  chose  you  for  my 
father:  what  do  you  expect  of  me?  Friendship!  Well,  I 
love  you  as  a  daughter  should  love  her  father.  The  purest, 
the  most  respectful,  the  tenderest  affection  for  you  fills  my 
soul;  you  asked  me  for  a  "louis";  I  gave  it  to  you,  and  yet 
you  murmur  at  not  getting  another  one,  which  does  not  belong 
to  me.  It  is  a  treasure  which  has  been  entrusted  to  me,  my 
good  Papa;  I  guard  it  and  will  always  guard  it  carefully. 
Even  if  you  were  like  "Colin  sick, "  in  truth  I  could  not  cure 
you;  and  nevertheless,  whatever  you  may  think  or  say,  no 
one  in  this  world  loves  you  more  than  I. 


512       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

In  this  letter  she  puts  him  off  with  the  teasing  assur- 
ance of  friendship.  In  another,  written  from  Marseilles, 
it  is  with  other  charming  women  that  she  mocks  him : 

I  received  on  my  arrival  here,  my  good  Papa,  your  letter  of 
October  ist.  It  has  given  me  keen  pleasure;  I  found  in  it 
evidences  of  your  friendship  and  a  tinge  of  that  gayety  and 
gallantry  which  make  all  women  love  you,  because  you  love 
them  all.  Your  proposition  to  carry  me  on  your  wings,  if 
you  were  the  angel  Gabriel,  made  me  laugh;  but  I  would  not 
accept  it,  although  I  am  no  longer  very  young  nor  a  virgin. 
That  angel  was  a  sly  fellow  and  your  nature  united  to  his  would 
become  too  dangerous.  I  should  be  afraid  of  miracles  happen- 
ing, and  miracles  between  women  and  angels  might  well 
not  always  bring  a  redeemer.  .  .  . 

I  have  arranged,  my  good  friend,  to  write  alternately  to  my 
"great  neighbor  "  and  to  you ;  the  one  to  whom  I  shall  not  have 
written  will  kindly  tell  the  other  that  I  love  him  with  all  my 
heart,  and  when  your  turn  comes  you  will  add  an  embrace  for 
the  good  wife  of  our  neighbor,  for  her  daughter,  for  little 
Mother  Caillot,  for  all  the  gentle  and  pretty  women  of  my 
acquaintance  whom  you  may  meet.  You  see  that  not  being 
able  to  amuse  you,  either  by  my  singing  or  by  chess,  I  seek  to 
procure  you  other  pleasures.  If  you  had  been  at  Avignon 
with  us,  it  is  there  you  would  have  wished  to  embrace  people. 
The  women  there  are  charming;  I  thought  of  you  every  time 
I  saw  one  of  them.  Adieu,  my  good  Papa;  I  do  not  relate 
to  you  the  details  of  my  journey,  as  I  have  written  of  them 
tc  our  neighbor,  who  will  communicate  them  to  you.  I 
limit  myself  to  assuring  you  of  the  most  constant  and  the 
tenderest  friendship  on  my  part. 

At  times  the  pursuer  is  too  badly  afflicted  with  gout 
in  his  legs  to  maintain  the  pursuit,  and  the  pursued  has  to 
come  to  his  assistance  to  keep  the  flirtation  going: 

How  are  you,  my  good  Papa?  Never  has  it  cost  me  so 
much  to  leave  you ;  every  evening  it  seems  to  me  that  you  would 
be  very  glad  to  see  me,  and  every  evening  I  think  of  you.  On 
Monday,  the  21st,  I  shall  go  to  meet  you  again;  I  hope  that 


Franklin's  French  Friends  513 

you  will  then  be  very  firm  on  your  feet,  and  that  the  teas  of 
Wednesday  and  Saturday,  and  that  of  Sunday  morning,  will 
regain  all  their  brilliance.  I  will  bring  you  la  bonne  iveque. 
My  fat  husband  will  make  you  laugh,  our  children  will  laugh 
together,  our  great  neighbor  will  quiz,  the  Abb£s  La  Roche 
and  Morellet  will  eat  all  the  butter,  Mme.  Grand,  her  amiable 
niece,  and  M.  Grand  will  help  the  company  out,  Pere  Pagin 
will  play  God  of  Love  on  his  violin,  I  the  march  on  the  Piano, 
and  you  Petits  Oiseaux  on  the  armonica. 

0 !  my  friend,  let  us  see  in  the  future  fine  and  strong  legs  for 
you,  and  think  no  more  of  the  bad  one  that  has  persecuted 
you  so  much.  After  what  is  bad,  one  enjoys  what  is  good 
more;  life  is  sown  with  both,  which  she  changes  unceasingly. 
What  she  cannot  keep  from  being  equal  and  uniform  is  my 
tenderness  for  you,  that  time,  place,  and  events  will  never 
alter. 

My  mother  and  all  my  family  wish  to  be  remembered  to 
you. 

I  have  had  some  news  of  you  through  our  neighbor,  but  I 
must  absolutely  have  some  from  you'. 

Amusingly  enough,  M.  Brillon  contributes  his  part  to 
the  restoration  of  the  gouty  legs  to  something  like  normal 
activity. 

The  visits  of  your  good  husband  during  my  sickness  [wrote 
Franklin  to  Madame  Brillon]  have  been  very  agreeable  to 
me.  His  conversation  has  eased  and  enlivened  me.  I  regret 
that,  instead  of  seeking  it  when  I  have  been  at  your  home,  I 
have  lost  so  much  time  in  playing  chess.  He  has  many  stories 
and  always  applies  them  well.  If  he  has  despoiled  you  of 
some,  you  can  repeat  them  all  the  same,  for  they  will  always 
please  me,  coming  from  your  mouth. 

There  is  another  letter  from  Madame  Brillon  to  Frank- 
lin which  drew  a  reply  from  him,  in  which  he  ascended 
into  the  Christian  heaven  with  almost  as  much  literary 
facility  as  marked  his  entrance  into  the  Pagan  Elysium. 
Her  letter  was  written  during  an  absence  from  home: 

VOL.    I — 33 


514       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Here  I  am  reduced  to  writing  to  you,  my  good  Papa,  and  to 
telling  you  that  I  love  you.  It  was  sweeter  no  doubt  to  let 
you  see  it  in  my  eyes.  How  am  I  going  to  spend  the  Wednes- 
days and  Saturdays?  No  teas,  no  chess,  no  music,  no  hope  of 
seeing  or  embracing  my  good  papa !  It  seems  to  me  that  the 
privation  which  I  experience  from  your  absence  would  suffice 
to  make  me  change  my  views,  were  I  inclined  to  materialism. 

Happiness  is  so  uncertain,  so  full  of  crosses,  that  the  deep 
conviction  that  we  shall  be  happier  in  another  life  can  alone 
tide  us  over  the  trials  of  this  one.  In  Paradise  we  shall  be 
reunited,  never  to  leave  each  other  again!  We  shall  there 
live  on  roasted  apples  only;  the  music  will  be  made  up  of 
Scotch  airs;  all  parties  will  be  given  over  to  chess,  so  that  no 
one  may  be  disappointed;  every  one  will  speak  the  same  lan- 
guage; the  English  will  be  neither  unjust  nor  wicked  there;  the 
women  will  not  be  coquettes,  the  men  will  be  neither  jealous 
nor  too  gallant;  "King  John"  will  be  left  to  eat  his  apples  in 
peace;  perhaps  he  will  be  decent  enough  to  offer  some  to  his 
neighbors — who  knows?  since  we  shall  want  for  nothing  in 
paradise !  We  shall  never  suffer  from  gout  or  nervous  troubles 
there.  Mr.  Mesmer  will  content  himself  with  playing  on  the 
armonica,  without  wearying  us  with  the  electric  fluid;  am- 
bition, envy,  snobbery,  jealousy,  prejudice,  all  these  will 
vanish  at  the  sound  of  the  trumpet.  A  lasting,  sweet  and 
peaceful  friendship  will  animate  every  gathering.  Every  day 
we  shall  love  one  another,  in  order  that  we  may  love  one  an- 
other still  more  the  day  after;  in  a  word,  we  shall  be  com- 
pletely happy.  In  the  meantime,  let  us  get  all  the  good  we 
can  out  of  this  poor  world  of  ours.  I  am  far  from  you,  my 
good  Papa;  I  look  forward  to  the  time  of  our  meeting,  and  I 
am  pleased  to  think  that  your  regrets  and  desires  equal  mine. 

My  mother  and  my  children  send  you  a  thousand  tender 
messages  of  respect ;  we  should  all  like  to  have  you  here.  May 
I  venture  to  ask  you  to  remember  us  to  your  grandson  ? 


And  this  was  the  deft  reply  of  Franklin  which  has  come 
down  to  us  in  French  corrected  by  Madame  Brillon's 
hand: 


Franklin's  French  Friends  515 

Since  you  have  assured  me  that  we  shall  meet  each  other 
again,  and  shall  recognize  each  other,  in  Paradise,  I  have 
reflected  continually  on  our  arrangements  in  that  country; 
for  I  have  great  confidence  in  your  assurances,  and  I 
believe  implicitly  what  you  believe. 

Probably  more  than  forty  years  will  pass  away,  after  my 
arrival  there,  before  you  will  follow  me.  I  fear  a  little  that, 
in  the  course  of  such  a  long  time,  you  may  forget  me;  that  is 
why  I  have  had  thoughts  of  proposing  to  you  that  you  give 
me  your  word  that  you  will  not  renew  your  contract  with  M. 
Brillon.  I  would  give  you  mine  at  the  same  time  to  wait 
for  you,  but  this  monsieur  is  so  good,  so  generous  to  us — he 
loves  you — and  we  him — so  well — that  I  can  not  think  of  this 
proposition  without  some  scruples  of  conscience — however 
the  idea  of  an  eternity,  in  which  I  should  not  be  more  favored 
than  to  be  allowed  to  kiss  your  hands,  or  your  cheeks  occasion- 
ally, and  to  pass  two  or  three  hours  in  your  sweet  society  at 
Wednesday  and  Saturday  evening  parties,  is  frightful.  In 
fine,  I  can  not  make  that  proposal,  but  since,  like  all  who 
know  you,  I  desire  to  see  you  happy  in  every  respect,  we 
may  agree  to  say  nothing  more  about  it  at  this  time,  and  to 
leave  you  at  liberty  to  decide,  when  we  are  all  together  again: 
there  to  determine  the  question  as  you  deem  best  for  your 
happiness  and  ours;  but,  determine  it  as  you  will,  I  feel  that 
I  shall  love  you  eternally.  Should  you  reject  me,  perhaps, 
I  shall  pay  my  addresses  to  Madame  D'Hardancourt  (the 
mother  of  Madame  Brillon),  who  might  be  glad  to  keep  house 
for  me.  In  that  event  I  should  pass  my  domestic  hours 
agreeably  with  her;  and  I  should  be  better  prepared  to  see  you. 
I  should  have  enough  time  in  those  forty  years  there  to  prac- 
tise on  the  armonica,  and,  perhaps,  I  should  play  well  enough 
to  be  worthy  to  accompany  your  pianoforte.  We  should 
have  little  concerts  from  time  to  time,  good  father  Pagin 
would  be  of  the  company,  your  neighbor  and  his  dear  family 
[M.  Jupin],  M.  de  Chaumont,  M.  B.,  M.  Jourdan,  M.  Gram- 
mont,  Madame  du  Tartre,  the  little  mother,  and  some  other 
select  friends  will  be  our  audience,  and  the  dear,  good  girls, 
accompanied  by  some  other  young  angels,  whose  portraits 
you  have  already  given  me,  will  sing  hallelujahs  with  us;  we 


516       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

shall  eat  together  apples  of  Paradise,  roasted  with  butter  and 
nutmeg;  and  we  shall  pity  them  who  are  not  dead. 

In  another  letter,  he  complains  that  she  shuts  him  out 
from  everything  except  a  few  civil  and  polite  kisses  such  as 
she  might  give  to  some  of  her  small  cousins. 

All  this,  however,  was  but  preliminary  to  the  treaty, 
which  the  signer  of  the  Treaty  of  Alliance  between  France 
and  the  United  States  formally  submitted  to  her  in  this 
letter. 

Among  the  articles  of  this  treaty  were  to  be  these : 

Article  6.  And  the  said  Mr.  F.  on  his  part  stipulates  and 
covenants  that  he  is  to  call  at  the  home  of  M'de  B.  as  often  as 
he  pleases. 

Article  7.     That  he  is  to  remain  there  as  long  as  he  pleases. 

Article  8.  And  that  when  he  is  with  her,  he  is  to  do  what 
he  pleases. 

He  did  not  have  much  hope,  he  said,  of  obtaining  her 
consent  to  the  eighth  article. 

In  another  letter,  the  aged  lover  tells  Madame  Brillon 
that  she  must  not  accuse  others  of  being  responsible  for 
his  having  left  her  half  an  hour  sooner  than  usual.  The 
truth  was  that  he  was  very  much  fatigued  for  special 
reasons  that  he  mentions,  and  thought  it  more  decent 
to  leave  her  than  to  fall  asleep,  which  he  was  beginning 
to  do  on  a  bench  in  her  garden  after  her  descent  into  it. 
After  all  a  half -hour  with  an  old  man,  who  could  not  make 
the  best  use  of  it,  was  a  thing  of  very  little  importance. 
Saturday  evening,  he  would  remain  with  her  until  she 
wished  him  to  go,  and,  in  spite  of  her  usual  polite  phrases, 
he  would  know  the  time  by  her  refusal  to  give  him  a  little 
kiss. 

With  another  note,  he  sent  to  Madame  Brillon  his 
Essay  on  the  Morals  of  Chess.     It  was  only  proper  that 


Franklin's  French  Friends  517 

it  should  be  dedicated  to  her,  he  said,  as  its  good  advice 
was  copied  from  her  generous  and  magnanimous  way  of 
playing  the  game.  In  the  same  letter,  he  stated  that  his 
grandson  had  inspected  the  house  that  she  had  urged 
him  to  apply  for,  but,  true  still  to  his  adopted  character, 
he  said,  "He  finds  it  too  magnificent  for  simple  Republi- 
cans." 

In  another  letter,  he  told  Madame  Brillon  that  he 
loved  to  live,  because  it  seemed  to  him  that  there  was 
much  more  pleasure  than  pain  in  existence.  We  should 
not  blame  Providence  rashly.  She  should  reflect  how 
many  even  of  our  duties  it  had  made  pleasures,  and 
that  it  had  been  good  enough,  moreover,  to  call  several 
pleasures  sins  to  enhance  our  enjoyment  of  them. 

One  more  letter  from  Madame  Brillon  and  we  shall 
let  her  retire  from  the  chess-board  with  the  credit  of 
having  proved  herself  fully  a  match  for  Franklin  in  the 
longest  and  most  absorbing  game  of  chess  that  he  played 
in  France: 

25th  of  December  at  Nice. 

The  atonement  is  adequate,  my  dear  Papa.  I  shall  no 
longer  call  you  Monseigneur  nor  even  Monsieur.  My  petition 
succeeded  before  reaching  you;  our  tears  are  dried.  You 
love  us,  you  tell  us  so;  you  are  in  good  health,  and  are  as 
roguish  as  ever,  since  you  are  planning  to  steal  me  from 
Brillon,  and  to  take  me  on  a  trip  to  America  without  letting 
anyone  know  it.  Everything  is  as  usual.  I  recognize  your 
fine  mask,  and  I  am  wholly  satisfied.  But,  my  good  Papa, 
why  say  that  you  write  French  badly, — that  your  pleasantries 
in  that  language  are  only  nonsense?  To  make  an  academic 
discourse,  one  must  be  a  good  grammarian;  but  to  write  to  our 
friends  all  we  need  is  a  heart,  and  you  combine  with  the  best 
heart,  my  lovable  Papa,  when  you  wish,  the  soundest  ethics, 
a  lively  imagination,  and  that  roguishness,  so  pleasant,  which 
shows  that  the  wisest  man  in  the  world  allows  his  wisdom  to  be 
perpetually  broken  against  the  rocks  of  femininity.     Write  to 


5i 8       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

me,  therefore,  write  to  me  often  and  much,  or  from  spite  I  shall 
learn  English.  I  should  want  to  know  it  quickly,  and  that 
would  hurt  me  as  I  have  been  forbidden  all  study,  and  you 
would  be  the  cause  of  my  ills,  for  having  refused  me  a  few 
lines  of  your  bad  French,  which  my  family  and  I — and  we  are 
not  simpletons — consider  very  good;  ask  my  neighbors,  M. 
d'Estaing,  Mme.  Helv£tius  and  her  abb6s,  if  it  would  be  right 
for  you  to  prejudice  the  improvement  which  the  sun  here  has 
caused  in  my  health,  for  the  sake  of  a  little  amour  propre 
which  is  beneath  My  Lord  the  Ambassador,  Benjamin  Franklin. 

One  more  letter  from  Franklin,  and  we  shall  cease  to 
walk  upon  eggs.  The  French  drapery  is  gone  and  nothing 
is  left  but  Saxon  nudity: 

I  am  charm'd  with  the  goodness  of  my  spiritual  guide,  and 
resign  myself  implicitly  to  her  Conduct,  as  she  promises  to 
lead  me  to  heaven  in  so  delicious  a  Road  when  I  could  be 
content  to  travel  thither  even  in  the  roughest  of  all  ways 
with  the  pleasure  of  her  company. 

How  kindly  partial  to  her  Penitent  in  finding  him,  on 
examining  his  conscience,  guilty  of  only  one  capital  sin  and 
to  call  that  by  the  gentle  name  of  Foible ! 

I  lay  fast  hold  of  your  promise  to  absolve  me  of  all  Sins 
past,  present,  &  future,  on  the  easy  &  pleasing  Condition  of 
loving  God,  America  and  my  guide  above  all  things.  I  am 
in  rapture  when  I  think  of  being  absolv'd  of  the  future. 

People  commonly  speak  of  Ten  Commandments. — I  have 
been  taught  that  there  are  twelve.  The  first  was  increase  & 
multiply  &  replenish  the  earth.  The  twelfth  is,  A  new  Com- 
mandment I  give  unto  you,  that  you  love  one  another.  It 
seems  to  me  that  they  are  a  little  misplaced,  And  that  the 
last  should  have  been  the  first.  However  I  never  made  any 
difficulty  about  that,  but  was  always  willing  to  obey  them  both 
whenever  I  had  an  opportunity.  Pray  tell  me  dear  Casuist, 
whether  my  keeping  religiously  these  two  commandments 
tho'  not  in  the  Decalogue,  may  not  be  accepted  in  Compen- 
sation for  my  breaking  so  often  one  of  the  ten,  I  mean  that 
which  forbids  coveting  my  neighbour's  wife,  and  which  I 


Franklin's  French  Friends  519 

confess  I  break  constantly  God  forgive  me,  as  often  as  I  see 
or  think  of  my  lovely  Confessor,  and  I  am  afraid  I  should  never 
be  able  to  repent  of  the  Sin  even  if  I  had  the  full  Possession  of 
her. 

And  now  I  am  Consulting  you  upon  a  Case  of  Conscience  I 
will  mention  the  Opinion  of  a  certain  Father  of  the  church 
which  I  find  myself  willing  to  adopt  though  I  am  not  sure  it  is 
orthodox.  It  is  this,  that  the  most  effectual  way  to  get  rid  of 
a  certain  Temptation  is,  as  often  as  it  returns,  to  comply  with 
and  satisfy  it. 

Pray  instruct  me  how  far  I  may  venture  to  practice  upon  this 
Principle  ? 

But  why  should  I  be  so  scrupulous  when  you  have  promised 
to  absolve  me  of  the  future? 

Adieu  my  charming  Conductress  and  believe  me  ever  with 
the  sincerest  Esteem  &  affection. 

Your  most  obed't  hum.  Serv. 

BF 

It  would  be  easy  enough  to  treat  this  correspondence 
too  seriously.  When  we  recall  the  social  sympathies  and 
diversions  which  drew  the  parties  to  it  together,  the 
advanced  age  of  Franklin,  the  friendly  relations  sustained 
by  him  to  all  the  members  of  the  Brillon  household,  his 
attempt  to  bring  about  a  matrimonial  union  between 
Temple  Franklin  and  the  daughter  of  Madame  Brillon, 
the  good-humored  complaisance  of  M.  Brillon,  the  usages 
of  Parisian  society  at  that  time,  the  instinctive  ease  with 
which  Franklin  adopted  the  tone  of  any  land  in  which 
he  happened  to  be,  and  the  sportive  grace  and  freedom, 
brought  by  his  wit  and  literary  dexterity  to  every  situ- 
ation that  invited  their  exercise,  we  might  well  infer 
that,  perhaps,  after  all,  on  his  part,  as  well  on  that  of  the 
clever  coquette,  whose  bodkin  was  quite  as  keen  as  his 
sword,  it  was  understood  that  the  liaison  was  to  be  only 
a  paper  one — an  encounter  of  wit  rather  than  of  love. 
From  first  to  last,  the  attitude  of  Madame  Brillon  towards 


520       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Franklin  was  simply  that  of  a  beautiful  and  brilliant 
woman,  to  whom  coquetry  was  an  art,  and  whose  intel- 
lectual activity  had  been  stimulated,  and  vanity  gratified, 
by  the  homage  of  a  brilliant,  magnetic  and  famous  man, 
who  possessed  to  a  remarkable  degree  the  faculty  of  render- 
ing his  splendid  intellectual  powers  subservient  to  purely 
social  uses.  It  was  no  slight  thing  to  a  woman  such  as 
Madame  Brillon  to  be  the  Vaingueur  du  Vaingueur  de  la 
Terre,  and  little  less  than  this  did  all  France  at  that  time 
insist  that  Franklin  was.  There  is  nothing  in  her  letters 
to  Franklin  to  indicate  that  she  ever  really  had  any  thought 
of  allowing  him  any  greater  degree  of  intimacy  with  her 
than  he  actually  enjoyed.  On  that  point  she  was  appar- 
ently as  firm  as  she  was  in  her  courteous  and  kindly  but 
inflexible  opposition  to  a  marriage  between  her  daughter 
and  William  Temple  Franklin. 

I  despise  slanderers  [she  wrote  to  Franklin  on  one  occas- 
ion], and  am  at  peace  with  myself,  but  that  is  not  enough,  one 
must  submit  to  what  is  called  propriety  (that  word  varies  in 
each  century  in  each  country)  to  sit  less  often  on  your  knees. 
I  shall  certainly  love  you  none  the  less,  nor  will  our  hearts  be 
more  or  less  pure;  but  we  shall  close  the  mouth  of  the  mali- 
cious, and  it  is  no  slight  thing  even  for  the  sage  to  silence  them. 

On  the  other  hand  there  is  much  to  support  the  idea 
that  the  motive  at  the  back  of  Franklin's  letters  to 
Madame  Brillon  was  very  much  the  same  as  that  which  in- 
spired the  Journey  to  the  Elysian  Fields  and  the  Ephemera. 
They  were  to  a  great  extent,  at  any  rate,  mere  literary 
bagatelles  as  those  performances  were — the  offerings  of  an 
opulent  wit  and  fancy  at  the  shrine  of  beauty  and  fashion, 
which  to  be  successful  in  an  academic  sense  had  to  be 
informed  by  the  spirit,  and  attuned  to  the  note,  of  the 
time  and  place.  All  the  same,  the  letters  from  Franklin 
to  Madame  Brillon  are  painful  reading.  Like  not  a  little 
else  in  his  life,  they  tend  to  confirm  the  impression  that 


Franklin's  French  Friends  521 

upright,  courageous,  public-spirited,  benevolent,  loving 
and  faithful  in  friendship  as  he  was,  on  the  sensual  side 
of  his  nature  he  was  lamentably  callous  to  the  moral 
laws  and  conventions  and  the  personal  and  social  refine- 
ments which  legitimize  and  dignify  the  physical  inter- 
course of  the  sexes.  The  pinchbeck  glitter,  the  deceitful 
vacuity  of  his  moral  regimen  and  Art  of  Virtue,  assume  an 
additional  meaning,  when  we  see  him  mumbling  the  cheek 
of  Madame  Brillon,  and  month  after  month  and  year 
after  year  writing  to  her  in  strains  of  natural  or  affected 
concupiscence.  It  was  things  of  this  sort  which  have 
assisted  in  strengthening  the  feeling,  not  uncommon, 
that  Franklin's  Art  of  Virtue  was  a  purely  counterfeit 
thing,  and  the  moralist  himself  an  untrustworthy  guide 
to  righteous  conduct. 

In  a  letter  to  M.  de  Veillard,  Franklin  after  his  return  to 
America  from  France  referred  to  the  Brillon  family  as 
"that  beloved  family."  Restored  to  his  home  surround- 
ings, he  forgot  his  French  lines,  and  was  again  as  soberly 
American  as  ever  in  thought  and  speech.  Who  would 
recognize  the  lover  of  Madame  Brillon  in  this  russet  picture 
that  he  paints  of  himself  in  his  eighty-third  year  in  a  letter 
to  her? 


You  have  given  me  Pleasure  by  informing  me  of  the  Wel- 
fare and  present  agreable  Circumstances  of  yourself  and 
Children;  and  I  am  persuaded  that  your  Friendship  for  me  will 
render  a  similar  Account  of  my  Situation  pleasing  to  you. 
I  am  in  a  Country  where  I  have  the  happiness  of  being  univer- 
sally respected  and  beloved,  of  which  three  successive  annual 
Elections  to  the  Chief  Magistracy,  in  which  Elections  the 
Representatives  of  the  People  in  Assembly  and  the  Supreme 
Court  join'd  and  were  unanimous,  is  the  strongest  Proof; 
this  is  a  Place  of  Profit  as  well  as  of  Honour;  and  my  Friends 
chearfully  assist  in  making  the  Business  as  easy  to  me  as 
possible. 


522       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

After  a  word  more  with  regard  to  the  dwelling  and  the 
dutiful  family,  so  often  mentioned  in  his  twilight  letters, 
he  concludes  in  this  manner: 

My  Rents  and  Incomes  are  amply  sufficient  for  all  my  pre- 
sent Occasions;  and  if  no  unexpected  Misfortunes  happen 
during  the  time  I  have  to  live,  I  shall  leave  a  handsome  Estate 
to  be  divided  among  my  Relatives.  As  to  my  Health,  it  con- 
tinues the  same,  or  rather  better  than  when  I  left  Passy;  but 
being  now  in  my  83rd  year,  I  do  not  expect  to  continue  much 
longer  a  Sojourner  in  this  world,  and  begin  to  promise  myself 
much  Gratification  of  my  Curiosity  in  soon  visiting  some 
other. 

In  this  letter,  Franklin  was  looking  forward,  we  hardly 
need  say,  to  a  very  different  world  from  the  one  where 
Madame  Brillon  was  to  be  the  second  Mrs.  Franklin,  and 
they  were  to  eat  together  apples  of  Paradise  roasted  with 
butter  and  nutmeg.  And  it  is  only  just  to  the  memory  of 
Madame  Brillon  to  recall  the  genuine  words,  so  unlike 
the  tenor  of  her  former  letters  to  Franklin,  in  which  she 
bade  him  farewell,  when  he  was  leaving  the  shores  of 
France: 

I  had  so  full  a  heart  yesterday  in  leaving  you  that  I  feared 
for  you  and  myself  a  grief -stricken  moment  which  could  only 
add  to  the  pain  which  our  separation  causes  me,  without  prov- 
ing to  you  further  the  tender  and  unalterable  affection  that  I 
have  vowed  to  you  for  always.  Every  day  of  my  life  I  shall 
recall  that  a  great  man,  a  sage,  was  willing  to  be  my  friend;  my 
wishes  will  follow  him  everywhere;  my  heart  will  regret  him 
incessantly;  incessantly  I  shall  say  I  passed  eight  years  with 
Doctor  Franklin;  they  have  flown,  and  I  shall  see  him  no 
more !  Nothing  in  the  world  could  console  me  for  this  loss,  ex- 
cept the  thought  of  the  peace  and  happiness  that  you  are  about 
to  find  in  the  bosom  of  your  family. 

It  was  to  the  Comtesse  d'Houdetot  of  Rousseau's 
Confessions,  however,   that  Franklin  was   indebted   for 


Franklin's  French  Friends  523 

his  social  apotheosis  in  France.  In  a  letter  to  her 
after  his  return  to  America,  he  calls  her  "ma  chere  & 
tou jours — amiable  Amie, "  and  declares  that  the  memory 
of  her  friendship  and  of  the  happy  hours  that  he  had 
passed  in  her  sweet  society  at  Sanois,  had  often  caused 
him  to  regret  the  distance  which  made  it  impossible  for 
them  to  ever  meet  again.  In  her  letters  to  him,  after  his 
return  to  America,  she  seeks  in  such  words  as  "homage/' 
"veneration"  and  "religious  tenderness"  to  express  the 
feelings  with  which  he  had  inspired  her.  In  these  letters, 
there  are  also  references  to  the  fete  champetre  which  she 
gave  in  his  honor  at  her  country  seat  at  Sanois  on  the 
1 2th  day  of  April,  in  the  year  1781,  and  which  was  one  of 
the  celebrated  events  of  the  time.  When  it  was  announced 
that  Franklin's  carriage  was  approaching  the  chateau,  the 
Countess  and  a  distinguished  retinue  of  her  relations  set 
out  on  foot  to  meet  him.  At  a  distance  of  about  half  a 
mile  from  the  chateau,  they  came  upon  him,  and  gathered 
around  the  doors  of  his  carriage,  and  escorted  it  to  the 
grounds  of  the  chateau,  where  the  Countess  herself  assisted 
Franklin  to  alight.  "The  venerable  sage,"  said  a  con- 
temporary account,  "with  his  gray  hairs  flowing  down  up- 
on his  shoulders,  his  staff  in  his  hand,  the  spectacles  of 
wisdom  on  his  nose,  was  the  perfect  picture  of  true  phi- 
losophy and  virtue. "  As  soon  as  Franklin  had  descended 
from  the  carriage,  the  whole  company  grouped  them- 
selves around  him,  and  the  Countess  declaimed,  with 
proper  emphasis  we  may  be  sure,  these  lines: 

11  Soul  of  heroes  and  wise  men, 
Oh,  Liberty!     First  boon  of  the  Gods! 
Alas!     It  is  too  remotely  that  we  pay  thee  our  vows; 
It  is  only  with  sighs  that  we  render  homage 
To  the  man  who  made  happy  his  fellow-citizens/' 

All  then  wended  their  way  through  the  gardens  of  the 
Countess  to  the  chateau,  where  they  were  soon  seated  at  a 


524       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

noble  feast.  With  the  first  glass  of  wine,  a  soft  air  was 
played,  and  the  Countess  and  her  relations  rose  to  their 
feet,  and  sang  in  chorus  these  lines,  which  they  repeated  in 
chorus  after  every  succeeding  glass  of  wine: 

"Of  Benjamin  let  us  celebrate  the  renown, 
Let  us  sing  the  good  that  he  has  done  to  mortals; 
In  America  he  will  have  altars, 
And  at  Sanois  we  drink  to  his  fame." 

When  the  time  for  the  second  glass  of  wine  came,  the 
Countess  sang  this  quatrain: 

"He  gives  back  to  human  nature  its  rights, 
To  free  it  he  would  first  enlighten  it, 
And  virtue  to  make  itself  adored, 
Assumed  the  form  of  Benjamin." 

And  at  the  third  glass,  the  Vicomte  d'Houdetot  sang  these 
words: 

"William  Tell  was  brave  but  savage, 
More  highly  our  dear  Benjamin  I  prize, 
While  shaping  the  destiny  of  America, 
At  meat  he  laughs  just  as  does  your  true  sage. " 

And  at  the  fourth  glass,  the  Vicomtesse  d'Houdetot  sang 
these  words: 

"I  say,  live  Philadelphia,  too! 
Freedom  has  its  allurement  for  me; 
In  that  country,  I  would  gladly  dwell, 
Though  neither  ball  nor  comedy  is  there." 

And  at  the  fifth  glass,  Madame  de  Pernan  sang  these  words : 

"All  our  children  shall  learn  of  their  mothers, 
To  love,  to  trust,  and  to  bless  you; 
You  teach  that  which  may  reunite 
All  the  sons  of  men  in  the  arms  of  one  father. " 


Franklin's  French  Friends  525 

And  at  the  sixth  glass,  the  aged  Comte  de  Tressan  sang 
these  words: 

"Live  Sanois!  Tis  my  Philadelphia. 
When  I  see  here  its  dear  law-giver; 
I  grow  young  again  in  the  heart  of  delight, 
And  I  laugh,  and  I  drink  and  list  to  Sophie. " 

And  at  the  seventh  glass,  the  Comte  d'Apch6  sang  these 
lines,  in  which  some  violence  was  done  to  the  facts  of 
English  History,  and  the  French  Revolution  was  fore- 
shadowed: 

"To  uphold  that  sacred  charter 
Which  Edward  accorded  to  the  English, 
I  feel  that  there  is  no  French  Knight 
Who  does  not  desire  to  use  his  sword. " 

And  so  quatrain  preceded  glass  and  chorus  followed 
quatrain  until  every  member  of  the  eulogistic  company 
had  sung  his  or  her  song.  The  banqueters  then  rose  from 
the  table,  and  the  Countess,  followed  by  her  relations, 
conducted  Franklin  to  an  arbor  in  her  gardens,  where  he 
was  presented  with  a  Virginia  locust  by  her  gardener, 
which  he  was  asked  to  honor  the  family  by  planting  with 
his  own  hands.  When  he  had  done  so,  the  Countess  de- 
claimed some  additional  lines,  which  were  afterwards 
inscribed  upon  a  marble  pillar,  erected  near  the  tree: 

"Sacred  tree,  lasting  monument 
Of  the  sojourn  deigned  to  be  made  here  by  a  sage, 
Of  these  gardens  henceforth  the  pride, 
Receive  here  the  just  homage 
Of  our  vows  and  of  our  incense; 
And  may  you  for  all  the  ages, 
Forever  respected  by  time, 
Live  as  long  as  his  name,  his  laws  and  his  deeds. " 


526       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

On  their  way  back  to  the  chateau,  the  concourse  was  met 
by  a  band  which  played  an  accompaniment,  while  the 
Countess  and  her  kinsfolk  sang  this  song: 

"May  this  tree,  planted  by  his  benevolent  hand, 
Lifting  up  its  new-born  trunk, 
Above  the  sterile  elm, 
By  its  odoriferous  flower, 
Make  fragrant  all  this  happy  hamlet. 
The  lightning  will  lack  power  to  strike  it, 
And  will  respect  its  summit  and  its  branches, 
'Twas  Franklin  who,  by  his  prosperous  labors, 
Taught  us  to  direct  or  to  extinguish  that, 
While  he  was  destroying  other  evils, 
Still  more  for  the  earth's  sake  to  be  pitied. " 

This  over,  all  returned  to  the  chateau  where  they  were 
engaged  for  some  time  in  agreeable  conversation.  In  the 
late  afternoon,  Franklin  was  conducted  by  the  Countess 
and  the  rest  to  his  carriage,  and,  when  he  was  seated, 
they  gathered  about  the  open  door  of  the  vehicle,  and  the 
Countess  addressed  her  departing  guest  in  these  words: 

"Legislator  of  one  world,  and  benefactor  of  two! 
For  all  time  mankind  will  owe  thee  its  tribute, 
And  it  is  but  my  part  that  I  here  discharge 
Of  the  debt  that  is  thy  due  from  all  the  ages. 

The  door  of  the  carriage  was  then  closed,  and  Franklin 
returned  to  Paris  duly  deified  but  as  invincibly  sensible  as 
ever. 

Another  French  woman  with  whom  Franklin  was  on 
terms  of  familiar  affection  was  the  wife  of  his  friend,  Jean 
Baptiste  Le  Roy.  His  endearing  term  for  her  was  petite 
femme  de  poche  (little  pocket  wife),  and,  in  a  letter  after 
his  return  to  Philadelphia,  she  assured  him  that,  as  long  as 
his  petite  femme  de  poche  had  the  breath  of  life,  she  would 
love  him. 


Franklin's  French  Friends  527 

On  one  occasion,  when  he  was  in  France,  she  wrote  to 
him,  asking  him  to  dine  with  her  on  Wednesday,  and  say- 
ing that  she  would  experience  great  pleasure  in  seeing  and 
embracing  him.  Assuredly,  he  replied,  he  would  not  fail 
her.  He  found  too  much  pleasure  in  seeing  her,  and  in 
hearing  her  speak,  and  too  much  happiness,  when  he  held 
her  in  his  arms,  to  forget  an  invitation  so  precious. 

In  another  letter  to  her,  after  his  return  to  America — 
the  letter  which  drew  forth  her  declaration  that  her  love 
for  him  would  last  as  long  as  her  breath — he  told  her  that 
she  was  very  courageous  to  ascend  so  high  in  a  balloon, 
and  very  good,  when  she  was  so  near  heaven,  not  to  think 
of  quitting  her  friends,  and  remaining  with  the  angels. 
Competition  might  well  have  shunned  an  effort  to  answer 
such  a  flourish  as  that  in  kind,  but  a  lady,  who  had  been 
up  in  a  balloon  among  the  angels,  was  not  the  person  to 
lack  courage  for  any  experiment.  She  only  regretted,  she 
said,  that  the  balloon  could  not  go  very  far,  for,  if  it  had 
been  but  able  to  carry  her  to  him,  she  would  have  been 
among  the  angels,  and  would  have  given  him  proofs  of  the 
respect  and  esteem  for  him,  ineffaceably  engraved  upon 
her  heart.  Sad  to  relate,  in  the  same  letter  she  tells 
Franklin  that  her  husband  had  proved  hopelessly  recreant 
to  every  principle  of  honor  and  good  feeling.  We  say, 
"  sad  to  relate,"  not  for  general  reasons  only,  but  because 
Franklin,  when  he  had  heard  in  1772  that  Le  Roy  was  well 
and  happily  married,  had  felicitated  him  on  the  event, 
and  repeated  his  oft-asserted  statement  that  matrimony  is 
the  natural  condition  of  man ;  though  he  omitted  this  time 
his  usual  comparison  of  celibacy  with  the  odd  half  of  a  pair 
of  scissors.  The  estrangement  between  his  little  pocket 
wife  and  her  husband,  however,  did  not  affect  his  feeling 
of  devoted  friendship  for  Jean  Baptiste  Le  Roy.  Some 
two  years  and  five  months  later,  when  the  wild  Walpurgis 
night  of  the  French  Revolution  was  setting  in,  he  wrote 
to  Le  Roy  to  find  out  why  he  had  been  so  long  silent.  ,  ?•  It 


528       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

is  now  more  than  a  year,"  he  said,  "since  I  have  heard 
from  my  dear  friend  Le  Roy.  What  can  be  the  reason? 
Are  you  still  living?  Or  have  the  mob  of  Paris  mistaken 
the  head  of  a  monopolizer  of  knowledge,  for  a  monopolizer 
of  corn,  and  paraded  it  about  the  streets  upon  a  pole?" 
The  fact  that  Le  Roy,  who  was  a  physicist  of  great  repu- 
tation, was  a  member  of  both  the  American  Philosophical 
Society  and  the  Royal  Society,  led  Franklin  in  one  of  his 
letters  to  address  him  as  his  "Dear  double  Confrere." 
Le  Roy's  three  brothers,  Pierre,  Charles  and  David  were 
also  friends  of  Franklin.  Indeed,  in  a  letter  to  Jean 
Baptiste,  Franklin  spoke  of  David,  to  whom  he  addressed 
his  valuable  paper  entitled  Maritime  Observations,  as  "our 
common  Brother. " 

Other  friendships  formed  by  Franklin  with  women  in 
France  were  those  with  Madame  Lavoisier,  Madame  de 
Forbach  and  Mademoiselle  Flainville.  Madame  Lavoisier 
was  first  the  wife  of  the  famous  chemist  of  that  name,  and, 
after  he  was  guillotined,  during  the  French  Revolution,  the 
wife  of  the  equally  famous  Benjamin  Thompson,  Count 
Rumford.  She  painted  a  portrait  of  Franklin,  and  sent 
it  to  him  at  Philadelphia. 

It  is  allowed  by  those,  who  have  seen  it  [he  wrote  to  her], 
to  have  great  merit  as  a  picture  in  every  respect;  but  what 
particularly  endears  it  to  me  is  the  hand  that  drew  it.  Our 
English  enemies,  when  they  were  in  possession  of  this  city 
(Philadelphia)  and  my  house,  made  a  prisoner  of  my  portrait, 
and  carried  it  off  with  them,  leaving  that  of  its  companion, 
my  wife,  by  itself,  a  kind  of  widow.  You  have  replaced  the 
husband,  and^the  lady  seems  to  smile  as  well  pleased. 

So  his  Eurydice,  as  soon  as  the  enchantments  of  the 
French  sorceress  lost  their  power,  was  re-united  to  him 
after  all. 

Among  his  French  friends,  Madame  de  Forbach,  the 
Dowager  Duchess  of  Deux-Ponts,  was  conspicuous  for  the 


Franklin's  French  Friends  529 

number  of  the  presents  that  she  made  to  him.  Among 
others,  was  the  fine  crab-tree  walking  stick,  surmounted 
with  a  gold  head,  wrought  in  the  form  of  a  cap  of  liberty, 
which  he  bequeathed  to  Washington.  Other  gifts  of 
hers  are  alluded  to  in  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  her, 
acknowledging  the  receipt  of  a  pair  of  scissors. 

It  is  true  [he  said]  that  I  can  now  neither  walk  abroad 
nor  write  at  home  without  having  something  that  may  remind 
me  of  your  Goodness  towards  me ;  you  might  have  added,  that 
I  can  neither  play  at  Chess  nor  drink  Tea  without  the  same 
sensation :  but  these  had  slipt  your  Memory.  There  are  Peo- 
ple who  forget  the  Benefits  they  receive,  Made  de  Forbach 
only  those  she  bestows. 

His  only  letter  to  Mademoiselle  Flainville  is  addressed 
to  "ma  chere  enfant, "'and  is  signed  "Your  loving  Papa." 
It  helps,  along  with  innumerable  other  kindred  scraps 
of  evidence,  to  prove  how  infirm  is  the  train  of  reasoning 
which  seeks  to  establish  a  parental  tie  between  Franklin 
and  anyone  simply  upon  the  strength  of  his  epistolary 
assumption  of  fatherhood.  He  might  as  well  be  charged 
with  polygamy  because  he  addressed  so  many  persons  as 
"my  wife"  or  "ma  femme. "  This  letter  also  has  its 
interest,  as  exemplifying  the  natural  manner  in  which  he 
awaited  the  sedan  chair  that  was  to  bear  him  away  from 
his  fleshly  tenement.  "I  have  been  harassed  with  Illness 
this  last  Summer,"  he  told  her,  "am  grown  old,  near 
83,  and  find  myself  very  infirm,  so  that  I  expect  to  be 
soon  call'd  for. " 

This  is  far  from  being  a  complete  list  of  the  French 
women  with  whom  Franklin  was  on  terms  of  affection- 
ate intimacy.  To  go  no  further,  we  know  that  Madame 
Brillon,  in  addition  to  writing  to  him  on  one  occasion, 
"  Give  this  evening  to  my  amiable  rival,  Madame  Helve- 
tius,  kiss  her  for  yourself  and  for  me,"  granted  him  on 
another  a  power  of  attorney  to  kiss  for  her  until  her 

VOL.   I — 34 


530       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

return,  whenever  he  saw  them,  her  two  neighbors,  Le 
Veillard,  and  her  pretty  neighbor,  Caillot. 

The  truth  is  that  Franklin  had  a  host  of  friends  of  both 
sexes  in  France. 

When  Thomas  Paine  visited  that  country,  after  the 
return  of  Franklin  to  America,  he  wrote  to  the  latter  that 
he  found  his  friends  in  France  "very  numerous  and  very 
affectionate";  and  we  can  readily  believe  it.  Among 
them  were  Buff  on,  Condorcet,  Lafayette,  the  Due  de  la 
Rochefoucauld,  Lavoisier,  Chastellux,  Grand,  Dupont, 
Dubourg  and  Le  Veillard. 

To  Buffon,  the  great  naturalist,  Franklin  was  drawn  by 
common  scientific  sympathies.  Like  Franklin,  he  became 
a  sufferer  from  the  stone,  and  one  of  the  results  was  a 
letter  in  which  the  former,  in  reply  to  an  inquiry  from 
him  as  to  how  he  obtained  relief  from  the  malady,  stated 
that  his  remedy  was  to  take,  on  going  to  bed,  "the  Bigness 
of  a  Pigeon's  Egg  of  Jelly  of  Blackberries";  which,  in  the 
eyes  of  modern  medical  science  was,  as  a  palliative,  hardly 
more  effective  than  a  bread  pill. 

With  Condorcet,  the  philosopher,  Franklin  was  intimate 
enough  to  callhim,  and  to  be  called  by  him,  "My  dear 
and  illustrious  Confrere";  and  it  was  he,  it  is  worthy  of 
mention,  who  happily  termed  Franklin  "the  modern 
Prometheus." 

For  Lafayette,  that  winning  figure,  forever  fixed  in  the 
American  memory,  despite  his  visit  to  America  in  old  age, 
in  immortal  youth  and  freshness,  like  the  young  lover 
and  the  happy  boughs  on  Keats's  Grecian  Urn,  Franklin 
had  a  feeling  not  unlike  that  of  Washington.  In  referring 
to  the  expedition  against  England,  in  which  Temple 
Franklin  was  to  have  accompanied  Lafayette,  Franklin 
said  in  a  letter  to  the  latter,  "I  flatter  myself,  too,  that  he 
might  possibly  catch  from  you  some  Tincture  of  those 
engaging  Manners  that  make  you  so  much  the  Delight 
of  all  that  know  you."     In  another  letter,  he  observed  in 


Franklin's  French  Friends  531 

reply  to  the  statement  by  Lafayette  that  the  writer  had 
had  enemies  in  America,  "You  are  luckier,  for  I  think  you 
have  none  here,  nor  anywhere."  When  it  became  his 
duty  to  deliver  to  Lafayette  the  figured  sword  presented  to 
the  latter  by  Congress,  he  performed  the  office,  though  ill- 
health  compelled  him  to  delegate  the  actual  delivery  of  the 
gift  to  his  grandson,  in  the  apt  and  pointed  language  which 
never  failed  him  upon  such  occasions.  "  By  the  help, "  he 
said,  "  of  the  exquisite  Artists  France  affords,  I  find  it  easy 
to  express  everything  but  the  Sense  we  have  of  your  Worth 
and  our  Obligations  to  you.  For  this,  Figures  and  even 
Words  are  found  insufficient.' *  Through  all  his  letters 
to  Lafayette  there  is  a  continuous  suggestion  of  cordial 
attachment  to  both  him  and  his  wife.  When  Lafayette 
wrote  to  him  that  Madame  de  Lafayette  had  just  given 
birth  to  a  daughter,  and  that  he  was  thinking  of  naming 
her  Virginia,  he  replied,  "  In  naming  your  Children  I  think 
you  do  well  to  begin  with  the  most  antient  State.  And  as 
we  cannot  have  too  many  of  so  good  a  Race  I  hope  you  & 
Mme  de  la  Fayette  will  go  thro  the  Thirteen.,,  This 
letter  was  written  at  Passy.  In  a  later  letter  to  Lafayette, 
written  at  Philadelphia,  he  concluded  by  saying,  "You 
will  allow  an  old  friend  of  four-score  to  say  he  loves  your 
wife,  when  he  adds,  and  children,  and  prays  God  to  bless 
them  all."  • 

For  the  Due  de  la  Rochefoucauld  he  entertained  the 
highest  respect  as  well  as  a  cordial  feeling  of  friendship. 
"The  good  Duke,"  he  terms  him  in  a  letter  to  Dr.  Price. 
And  it  was  to  the  judgment  of  the  Duke  and  M.  le  Veillard 
in  France,  as  it  was  to  that  of  Vaughan  and  Dr.  Price  in 
England,  as  we  shall  see,  that  he  left  the  important  ques- 
tion as  to  whether  any  of  the  Autobiography  should  be 
published,  and,  if  so,  how  much.  Among  the  many 
tributes  paid  to  his  memory,  was  a  paper  on  his  life  and 
character  read  by  the  Duke  before  the  Society  of  1789. 
One  of   the  Duke's  services  to  America   was  that  of 


532       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

translating  into  French,  at  the  request  of  Franklin,  for 
European  circulation  all  the  constitutions  of  the  American 
States. 

Lavoisier  was  a  member  with  Franklin  of  the  commis- 
sion which  investigated  the  therapeutic  value  of  mesmer- 
ism, and  exposed  the  imposture  of  Mesmer.  There  are  no 
social  incidents  in  the  intercourse  of  the  two  men,  friendly 
as  it  was,  so  far  as  we  know,  worthy  of  mention ;  but,  in  a 
passage  in  one  of  Franklin's  letters  to  Jan  Ingenhousz, 
we  have  a  glimpse  of  the  master,  of  whom,  when  guil- 
lotined, after  the  brutal  declaration  of  Coffinhal,  the 
President  of  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal,  that  the  Republic 
had  no  need  for  savants,  Lagrange  remarked,  "They  needed 
but  a  moment  to  lay  that  head  low,  and  a  hundred  years, 
perhaps,  will  not  be  sufficient  to  reproduce  its  like." 
Speaking  of  an  experiment  performed  by  Lavoisier, 
Franklin  wrote  to  Jan  Ingenhousz,  "He  kindled  a  hollow 
Charcoal,  and  blew  into  it  a  Stream  of  dephlogisticated 
Air.  In  this  Focus,  which  is  said  to  be  the  hottest  fire 
human  Art  has  yet  been  able  to  produce,  he  melted 
Platina  in  a  few  Minutes. " 

Franklin's  friend,  the  Chevalier  (afterwards  Marquis) 
de  Chastellux,  who  served  with  the  Comte  de  Rocham- 
beau  in  America,  ^nd  was  the  author  of  the  valuable 
Travels  in  North  Mnerica  in  the  Years  1780,  81  and  82, 
succeeded  in  making  himself  as  agreeable  to  American 
women  as  Franklin  succeeded  ii||niaking  himself  to  French 
women.  There  is  an  echo  of  this  popularity  in  one  of 
Franklin's  letters  to  him.  "Dare  I  confess  to  you,"  he 
said,  when  he  was  still  at  Passy,  and  the  Chevalier  was 
still  in  America,  "that  I  am  your  rival  with  Madame  G — ? 
(Franklin's  Katy).  I  need  not  tell  you,  that  I  am  not  a 
dangerous  one.  I  perceive  that  she  loves  you  very  much  ; 
and  so  does,  dear  Sir,  yours,  &c. " 

Through  the  influence  of  Leray  de  Chaumont,  Ferdi- 
nand Grand,  who  was  a  Swiss  Protestant,  became  the 


Franklin's  French  Friends  533 

banker  of  our  representatives  in  France,  and,  after  Frank- 
lin's return  to  America,  he  remained  entrusted  with  some  of 
Franklin's  private  funds  upon  which  the  latter  was  in  the 
habit  of  drawing  from  time  to  time.  The  correspondence 
between  Franklin  and  himself  is  almost  wholly  lacking  in 
social  interest,  but  it  indicates  a  deep  feeling  of  affection 
upon  Franklin's  part. 

For  Dupont  de  Nemours,  the  distinguished  economist, 
and  the  founder  of  the  family,  which  has  been  so  conspicu- 
ous in  the  industrial,  military  and  naval  history  of  the 
United  States,  Franklin  cherished  a  feeling  distinctly 
friendly.  His  acquaintance  with  Dupont  as  well  as  with 
Dubourg,  who,  like  Dupont,  was  a  member  of  the  group 
of  French  Economists,  known  as  the  Physiocrats,  was 
formed,  as  we  have  seen,  before  his  mission  to  France. 
The  correspondence  between  Franklin  and  Dupont, 
however,  like  that  between  Franklin  and  Grand,  has  but 
little  significance  for  the  purposes  of  this  chapter. x 

This,  however,  is  not  true  of  the  relations  between  Dr. 
Barbeu  Dubourg,  a  medical  practitioner  of  high  standing, 
and  Franklin.  They  not  only  opened  their  minds  freely 
to  each  other  upon  a  considerable  variety  of  topics,  but 
their  intercourse  was  colored  by  cordial  association.  Of 
all  the  men  who  came  under  the  spell  of  Franklin's  genius, 
Dubourg,  who  was,  to  use  Franklin's  own  words,  "a 
man  of  extensive  learning,"  was  one  of  the  American 
philosopher's  most  enthusiastic  pupils.  "My  dear  Mas- 
ter," was  the  term  that  he  habitually  used  in  speaking  of 
him,  and  his  reverence  for  the  object  of  his  admiration  led 
him  to  translate  into  French,  with  some  additions,  the 

x  No  humanitarian  levels  were  too  high  for  the  aspirations  of  Franklin, 
but  he  always  took  care,  to  use  one  of  the  sayings  that  he  conceived  or 
borrowed,  not  to  ride  before  the  horse's  head.  There  is  just  a  suspicion 
of  unconscious  sarcasm  in  a  letter  from  him  to  Dupont  in  which  he  ex- 
presses the  wish  that  the  Physiocratic  philosophy  may  grow  and  increase 
till  it  becomes  the  governing  philosophy  of  the  human  species,  "as  it  must 
be  that  of  superior  beings  in  better  worlds." 


534       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

edition  of  Franklin's  scientific  papers,  brought  out  in 
London  by  David  Henry  in  1769.  Nothing  that  he  had 
ever  written,  he  told  his  master,  had  been  so  well  received 
as  the  preface  to  this  compilation.  "So  great,' '  he  de- 
clared, "is  the  advantage  of  soaring  in  the  shadow  of 
Franklin's  wings."  We  pass  by  the  communications 
from  Franklin  to  Dubourg  on  purely  scientific  subjects. 
One  letter  from  the  former  to  him  brings  to  our  knowledge 
a  curious  habit  into  which  Franklin  was  drawn  by  the 
uncompromising  convictions  that  he  entertained  in 
regard  to  the  origin  of  bad  colds  and  the  virtues  of  venti- 
lation, of  which  we  shall  hereafter  speak  more  particularly. 

You  know  [he  said]  the  cold  bath  has  long  been  in  vogue 
here  as  a  tonic;  but  the  shock  of  the  cold  water  has  always 
appeared  to  me,  generally  speaking,  as  too  violent,  and  I  have 
found  it  much  more  agreeable  to  my  constitution  to  bathe  in 
another  element,  I  mean  cold  air.  With  this  view  I  rise  almost 
every  morning,  and  sit  in  my  chamber  without  any  clothes 
whatever,  half  an  hour  or  an  hour,  according  to  the  season, 
either  reading  or  writing.  This  practice  is  not  in  the  least  pain- 
ful, but,  on  the  contrary,  agreeable;  and,  if  I  return  to  bed 
afterwards,  before  I  dress  myself,  as  sometimes  happens,  I 
make  a  supplement  to  my  night's  rest  of  one  or  two  hours  of  the 
most  pleasing  sleep  that  can  be  imagined.  I  find  no  ill  conse- 
quences whatever  resulting  from  it,  and  that  at  least  it  does 
not  injure  my  health,  if  it  does  not  in  fact  contribute  much  to 
its  preservation. 

Another  letter  from  Franklin  to  Dubourg  is  a  disser- 
tation on  swimming — the  only  form  of  outdoor  exercise, 
to  which  he  was  addicted — but  in  which  he  was,  through- 
out his  life,  such  an  adept  that  he  could  even  make  the 
following  entry  in  his  Journal,  when  he  was  at  South- 
ampton on  his  return  to  America  from  France:  "I 
went  at  noon  to  bathe  in  Martin's  salt-water  hot-bath, 
and,  floating  on  my  back,  fell  asleep,  and  slept  near  an 


Franklin's  French  Friends  535 

hour  by  my  watch  without  sinking  or  turning!  a  thing  I 
never  did  before,  and  should  hardly  have  thought  possible. 
Water  is  the  easiest  bed  that  can  be!"  In  the  letter  to 
Dubourg,  he  recalls  the  assertion  of  a  M.  Robinson  that 
fat  persons  with  small  bones  float  most  easily  upon  the 
water,  makes  a  passing  reference  to  the  diving  bell  and  the 
swimming  waist-coat,  now  known  as  the  life-preserver,  and 
suggests  the  comfort  of  varying  the  progressive  motion 
of  swimming  by  turning  over  occasionally  upon  one's 
back,  and  otherwise.  He  also  states  that  the  best  method 
of  allaying  cramp  is  to  give  a  sudden  vigorous  and  violent 
shock  to  the  affected  region ;  which  may  be  done  in  the  air 
as  the  swimmer  swims  along  on  his  back,  and  recalls  an 
incident  illustrative  of  the  danger  of  throwing  one's  self, 
when  thoroughly  heated,  into  cold  spring  water. 

The  exercise  of  swimming  [he  declared]  is  one  of  the  most 
healthy  and  agreeable  in  the  world.  After  having  swam  for 
an  hour  or  two  in  the  evening,  one  sleeps  coolly  the  whole 
night,  even  during  the  most  ardent  heat  of  summer.  Perhaps, 
the  pores  being  cleansed,  the  insensible  perspiration  increases 
and  occasions  this  coolness.  It  is  certain  that  much  swimming 
is  the  means  of  stopping  a  diarrhcea,  and  even  of  producing  a 
constipation. 

In  this  letter,  too,  Franklin  tells  Dubourg  how,  when 
he  was  a  boy,  he  quickened  his  progress  in  swimming  by 
aiding  the  stroke  of  his  hands  with  oval  palettes,  and 
attempted  to  do  so  by  attaching  a  kind  of  sandals  to  the 
soles  of  his  feet;  and  also  how  in  his  boyhood,  on  one 
occasion,  he  lay  on  his  back  in  a  pond  and  let  his  kite  draw 
him  across  it  without  the  least  fatigue,  and  with  the  great- 
est pleasure  imaginable.  He  thought  it  not  impossible  to 
cross  in  this  manner  from  Dover  to  Calais. 

Another  letter  from  Franklin  to  Dubourg  on  what  he 
calls  the  doctrines  of  life  and  death  is  a  delightful  example 
of  both  his  insatiable  inquisitiveness  and  the  readiness 


536       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

with  which  he  could  give  a  pleasant  fillip  to  any  subject 
however  grave.  Pie  is  speaking  of  some  common  flies 
that  had  been  drowned  in  Madeira  wine,  apparently  about 
the  time  when  it  wras  bottled  in  Virginia  to  be  sent  to 
London,  where  the  writer  was: 

At  the  opening  of  one  of  the  bottles,  at  the  house  of  a  friend 
where  I  then  was  [he  said],  three  drowned  flies  fell  into  the 
first  glass  that  was  filled.  Having  heard  it  remarked  that 
drowned  flies  were  capable  of  being  revived  by  the  rays  of  the 
sun,  I  proposed  making  the  experiment  upon  these;  they  were 
therefore  exposed  to  the  sun  upon  a  sieve,  which  had  been 
employed  to  strain  them  out  of  the  wine.  In  less  than  three 
hours,  two  of  them  began  by  degrees  to  recover  life.  They 
commenced  by  some  convulsive  motions  of  the  thighs,  and  at 
length  they  raised  themselves  upon  their  legs,  wiped  their 
eyes  with  their  fore  feet,  beat  and  brushed  their  wings  with 
their  hind  feet,  and  soon  after  began  to  fly,  finding  themselves 
in  Old  England,  without  knowing  how  they  came  thither. 
The  third  continued  lifeless  till  sunset,  when,  losing  all  hopes 
of  him,  he  was  thrown  away. 

I  wish  it  were  possible,  from  this  instance,  to  invent  a 
method  of  embalming  drowned  persons,  in  such  a  manner  that 
they  may  be  recalled  to  life  at  any  period,  however  distant; 
for  having  a  very  ardent  desire  to  see  and  observe  the  state  of 
America  a  hundred  years  hence,  I  should  prefer  to  any  ordi- 
nary death,  the  being  immersed  in  a  cask  of  Madeira  wine,  with 
a  few  friends,  till  that  time,  to  be  then  recalled  to  life  by  the 
solar  warmth  of  my  dear  country !  But  since  in  all  probability 
we  live  in  an  age  too  early  and  too  near  the  infancy  of  science, 
to  hope  to  see  such  an  art  brought  in  our  time  to  its  perfection, 
I  must  for  the  present  content  myself  with  the  treat,  which  you 
are  so  kind  as  to  promise  me,  of  the  resurrection  of  a  fowl  or 
turkey  cock. 

The  friendship  of  Dubourg  for  Franklin  bore  good 
fruit  for  America,  when  the  American  Revolution  came 
on ;  for  a  sanguine  letter  from  him  exerted  a  determining 
influence  in  inducing  Congress  to  send  Franklin  to  France. 


Franklin's  French  Friends  537 

Le  Veillard,  who  was  a  neighbor  of  Franklin  at  Passy, 
was  one  of  the  friends  whom  Franklin  loved  as  he  loved 
Hugh  Roberts  or  John  Hughes,  Strahan  or  Jan  Ingen- 
housz.  And  this  feeling,  as  usual,  included  the  members  of 
his  friend's  family.  Public  cares,  he  wrote  to  Le  Veillard, 
after  his  return  to  America,  could  not  make  him  forget 
that  he  and  Le  Veillard  loved  one  another.  In  the  same 
letter,  he  spoke  of  Madame  Le  Veillard,  as  "the  best 
of  good  women,"  and  of  her  daughter  as  the  amiable 
daughter,  who,  he  thought,  would  tread  in  her  footsteps. 
In  a  later  letter,  he  told  Le  Veillard  that  he  could  not  give 
him  a  better  idea  of  his  present  happiness  in  his  family 
than  by  informing  him  that  his  daughter  had  all  the  vir- 
tues of  a  certain  good  lady  whom  Le  Veillard  allowed  him 
to  love;  the  same  tender  affections  and  intentions,  ingenu- 
ity, industry,  economy,  etc.  "Embrace  that  good  dame 
for  me  warmly,  and  the  amiable  daughter,"  he  added. 
"My  best  wishes  attend  the  whole  family,  whom  I  shall 
never  cease  to  love  while  I  am  B.  Franklin. "  This  wealth 
of  affection  was  richly  repaid.  The  closest  relations  existed 
between  Franklin  and  the  Le  Veillard  family,  while  he 
was  in  France,  and,  when  he  left  that  country,  Le  Veillard 
was  not  content  to  accompany  him  simply  to  the  sea- 
coast,  but  was  his  companion  as  far  as  Southampton. 
To  him,  Abel  James,  Benjamin  Vaughan  and  the  Shipleys 
we  are  beholden  for  the  fact  that  the  Autobiography  was 
brought  down  to  the  year  1757;  there  to  stop  like  the 
unfinished  tower  which  tantalized  the  world  with  a  haunt- 
ing sense  of  its  rare  worth  and  incompleteness.  Like  a 
faithful,  good  wife,  who  avails  herself  of  her  intimacy 
with  her  husband  to  bring  the  continuous  pressure  of  her 
influence  to  bear  upon  him  for  the  purpose  of  arousing 
him  to  a  proper  sense  of  his  duty,  Le  Veillard  spared 
neither  entreaty  nor  reproach  to  secure  additions  to  the 
precious  sibylline  leaves  of  the  Autobiography.  "You 
blame  me  for  writing  three  pamphlets  and  neglecting  to 


538       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

write  the  little  history,"  Franklin  complained.  "You 
should  consider  they  were  written  at  sea,  out  of  my  own 
head;  the  other  could  not  so  well  be  written  there  for 
want  of  the  documents  that  could  only  be  had  here." 
After  this  bit  of  self-defense,  Franklin  goes  on  to  describe 
his  physical  condition.  He  realized  that  the  stone  in  his 
bladder  had  grown  heavier,  he  said,  but  on  the  whole  it 
did  not  give  him  more  pain  than  when  he  was  at  Passy, 
and,  except  in  standing,  walking  or  making  water,  he 
was  very  little  incommoded  by  it.  Sitting  or  lying  in 
bed,  he  was  generally  quite  easy,  God  be  thanked,  and, 
as  he  lived  temperately,  drank  no  wine,  and  used  daily 
the  exercise  of  the  dumb-bell,  he  flattered  himself  that 
the  stone  was  kept  from  augmenting  so  much  as  it  might 
otherwise  do,  and  that  he  might  still  continue  to  find  it 
tolerable.  "People  who  live  long,"  the  unconquerable 
devotee  of  human  existence  declared,  "who  will  drink  of 
the  cup  of  life  to  the  very  bottom,  must  expect  to  meet 
with  some  of  the  usual  dregs. " 

The  view  taken  by  Franklin  in  this  letter  of  his  physical 
condition  was  entirely  too  cheerful  to  work  any  alteration 
in  the  resolution  of  Le  Veillard  that  the  Autobiography 
should  be  completed,  if  the  unremitting  appeal  of  an  old 
friend  could  prevail.  In  a  subsequent  letter,  Franklin 
tells  him  that  in  Philadelphia  his  time  was  so  cut  to  pieces 
by  friends  and  strangers  that  he  had  sometimes  envied  the 
prisoners  in  the  Bastile.  His  three  years  of  service  as 
President,  however,  would  expire  in  the  succeeding  Octo- 
ber, and  he  had  formed  the  idea  of  retiring  then  to  Temple's 
farm  at  Rancocas,  where  he  would  be  free  from  the  inter- 
ruption of  visits,  and  could  complete  the  work  for  Le 
Veillard's  satisfaction.  In  the  meantime,  in  view  of  the 
little  remnant  of  life  left  to  him,  the  accidents  that  might 
happen  before  October,  and  Le  Veillard's  earnest  desire, 
he  had  resolved  to  proceed  with  the  Autobiography  the 
very  next  day,  and  to  go  on  with  it  daily  until  finished. 


Franklin's  French  Friends  539 

This,  if  his  health  permitted,  might  be  in  the  course  of 
the  ensuing  summer. 

In  a  still  later  letter,  Franklin  declared  that  Le  Veil- 
lard  was  a  hard  taskmaster  to  his  friend.  "You  insist," 
he  said,  "  on  his  writing  his  life,  already  a  long  work,  and  at 
the  same  time  would  have  him  continually  employed  in 
augmenting  the  subject,  while  the  time  shortens  in  which 
the  work  is  to  be  executed. "  Some  months  later,  he  is 
able  to  send  to  Le  Veillard  the  joyful  intelligence  that  he 
had  recently  made  great  progress  in  the  work  that  his 
friend  so  urgently  demanded,  and  that  he  had  come  as  far 
as  his  fiftieth  year.  Indeed,  he  even  stated  that  he  ex- 
pected to  have  the  work  finished  in  about  two  months,  if 
illness,  or  some  unforeseen  interruption,  did  not  prevent. 
This  expectation  was  not  realized,  and  the  reason  for  it 
is  stated  in  painful  terms  in  a  subsequent  letter  from 
Franklin  to  Le  Veillard. 

I  have  a  long  time  [he  said]  been  afflicted  with  almost  con- 
stant and  grevious  Pain,  to  combat  which  I  have  been  obliged 
to  have  recourse  to  Opium,  which  indeed  has  afforded  me  some 
Ease  from  time  to  time,  but  then  it  has  taken  away  my  Appe- 
tite and  so  impeded  my  Digestion  that  I  am  become  totally 
emaciated,  and  little  remains  of  me  but  a  Skeleton  covered 
with  a  Skin.  In  this  Situation  I  have  not  been  able  to  con- 
tinue my  Memoirs,  and  now  I  suppose  I  shall  never  finish  them. 
Benjamin  has  made  a  Copy  of  what  is  done,  for  you,  which 
shall  be  sent  by  the  first  safe  Opportunity. 

The  copy  was  subsequently  sent  to  Le  Veillard,  and, 
after  the  death  of  Franklin,  was  given  by  him  to  William 
Temple  Franklin,  to  whom  Franklin  bequeathed  most  of 
his  papers,  in  exchange  for  the  original  manuscript  of  the 
Autobiography.  The  motive  for  the  exchange  was  doubt- 
less the  desire  of  Temple  to  secure  the  most  legible  "copy" 
that  he  could  find  for  the  printer  of  his  edition  of  his 
grandfather's  works.     The  original  manuscript  finally  be- 


540       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

came  the  property  by  purchase  of  the  late  John  Bigelow. 
There  is  reason  to  believe  that,  even  after  the  receipt  of 
the  copy  of  the  Autobiography,  Le  Veillard  still  cherished 
the  hope  that  the  work  might  be  brought  down  to  a  later 
date.  Writing  to  Le  Veillard  only  a  few  days  before 
Franklin's  death,  Jefferson  said : 

I  wish  I  could  add  to  your  happiness  by  giving  you  a  favour- 
able account  of  the  good  old  Doctor.  I  found  him  in  bed 
where  he  remains  almost  constantly.  He  had  been  clear  of 
pain  for  some  days  and  was  chearful  and  in  good  spirits.  He 
listened  with  a  glow  of  interest  to  the  details  of  your  revolu- 
tion and  of  his  friends  which  I  gave  him.  He  is  much  emaci- 
ated. I  pressed  him  to  continue  the  narration  of  his  life  and 
perhaps  he  will. 

That  Le  Veillard  had  a  lively  mind  we  may  well  infer 
from  an  amusing  paragraph  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Frank- 
lin in  which  he  pictures  the  jealousy  with  which  Madame 
Helvetius  and  Madame  Brillon  regarded  each  other  after 
the  departure  of  Franklin  from  France. 

You  had  two  good  friends  here  [he  said]  who  might  have 
lived  harmoniously  enough  with  each  other,  because  they 
almost  never  saw  each  other,  and  you  assured  each  of  them 
privately  that  it  was  she  that  you  loved  the  best ;  but  do  you 
venture  to  write  to  one  and  keep  silent  to  the  other?  The 
first  does  not  fail  to  brag  and  show  her  letter  everywhere; 
what  do  you  wish  to  become  of  the  other  ?  Two  women  draw 
their  knives,  their  friends  take  sides,  the  war  becomes  general, 
now  see  what  you  have  done.  You  set  fire  with  a  bit  of  paper 
to  one  half  of  the  world,  you  who  have  so  effectively  aided 
in  pacifying  the  other  half! 

It  was  a  singularly  unhappy  prophecy  that  Franklin, 
after  his'return  to  Philadelphia,  made  to  this  friend  whose 
lips  were  so  soon  to  be  dyed  with  the  red  wine  of  the 
guillotine.  "When  this  fermentation  is  over,"  he  wrote 
to  him  with  regard  to  the  popular  tumults  in  which  France 


Franklin's  French  Friends  541 

was  then  involved,  "and  the  troubling  parts  subsided, 
the  wine  will  be  fine  and  good,  and  cheer  the  hearts  of  those 
who  drink  it." 

A  bright  letter  from  the  daughter  of  Le  Veillard  merits 
a  passing  word.  In  reply  to  the  statement  of  Franklin 
that  she  did  not  embrace  him  with  a  good  grace,  she  says : 

You  know  doubtless  a  great  number  of  things;  you  have 
travelled  much ;  you  know  men,  but  you  have  never  penetrated 
the  head  of  a  French  girl.  Well !  I  will  tell  you  their  secret : 
When  you  wish  to  embrace  one  and  she  says  that  it  does  not 
pain  her,  that  means  that  it  gives  her  pleasure. 

Very  dear,  too,  to  Franklin,  was  Dr.  Jan  Ingenhousz, 
the  eminent  scientist  and  physician  to  Maria  Theresa. 
Many  years  after  Franklin  made  his  acquaintance,  he 
received  from  Franklin  the  assurance  that  he  had  always 
loved  him  ever  since  he  knew  him,  with  uninterrupted  affec- 
tion, and  he  himself  in  a  previous  letter  to  Franklin  styled 
him  in  his  imperfect  English  "the  most  respectful"  of  all 
his  friends.  Only  a  few  of  the  numerous  letters  that 
Franklin  must  have  written  to  this  friend  are  known  to  be 
in  existence,  and  these  are  not  particularly  interesting 
from  a  social  point  of  view.  In  one  respect,  however, 
they  strikingly  evince  the  kindness  of  heart  which  made 
Franklin  so  lovable.  As  was  true  of  many  other  Euro- 
peans of  his  time,  Ingenhousz  incurred  considerable  pe- 
cuniary loss  in  American  business  ventures,  and,  like  King 
David,  who  in  his  haste  called  all  men  liars,  he  was  dis- 
posed at  one  time  to  call  all  Americans  knaves.  One  of 
his  American  debtors,  as  we  have  already  stated,  was 
Samuel  Wharton,  of  Philadelphia. 

I  know  we  should  be  happy  together  [wrote  Franklin  to 
Ingenhousz  when  the  writer  was  about  to  return  to  America], 
and  therefore  repeat  my  Proposition  that  you  should  ask 
Leave  of  the  Emperor  to  let  you  come  and  live  with  me  during 
the  little  Remainder  of  Life  that  is  left  me.     I  am  confident 


542       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

his  Goodness  would  grant  your  Request.  You  will  be  at  no 
expence  while  with  me  in  America;  you  will  recover  your  Debt 
from  Wharton,  and  you  will  make  me  happy. 

And  the  letter  concludes  with  the  request  that  Ingen- 
housz,  who  shared  his  enthusiasm  for  electrical  experi- 
ments, would  let  him  know  soon  whether  he  would  make 
him  happy  by  accepting  his  invitation.  "I  have  Instru- 
ments, "  he  declared,  in  terms  that  remind-  us  of  Uncle 
Toby  and  Corporal  Trim,  when  they  were  planning  their 
future  military  diversions  together,  "if  the  Enemy  did  not 
destroy  them  all,  and  we  will  make  Plenty  of  Experiments 
together." 

Such  were  the  more  conspicuous  of  the  friendships 
which  clustered  so  thickly  about  the  life  of  Franklin.1 

1  Franklin  had  many  intimate  friends  besides  those  mentioned  in  our 
text.  In  two  letters  to  Samuel  Rhoads  he  refers  to  his  "dear  old  Friend 
Mrs.  Paschal."  In  a  letter  to  Thomas  Mifflin,  congratulating  him  upon 
his  election  as  President  of  Congress,  he  speaks  of  their  "ancient  friendship." 
William  Hunter  he  addresses  in  1786  as  "my  dear  old  friend."  In  a  letter 
to  him  in  1782,  Thomas  Pownall,  the  former  Colonial  Governor,  says: 
"Permett  me  to  say  how  much  I  have  been  your  old  invariable  friend  of 
four  or  five  and  twenty  years  standing."  Jean  Holker  and  his  wife,  of 
Rouen,  were  "dear  friends"  of  his,  and  he  was  on  terms  of  intimacy  with 
John  Joseph  Monthieu,  a  Paris  merchant,  and  Turgot,  the  French  states- 
man. He  writes  to  Miss  Alexander  from  Passy  that  he  has  been  to  pay 
his  respects  to  Madame  La  Marck,  "not  merely,"  he  says,  "because  it 
was  a  Compliment  due  to  her,  but  because  I  love  her;  which  induces  me 
to  excuse  her  not  letting  me  in."  One  of  Franklin's  friends,  Dr.  Edward 
Bancroft,  a  native  of  Massachusetts,  who  kept  one  foot  in  London  and  one 
foot  in  Paris  during  the  Revolution,  for  the  purpose,  as  was  supposed  by 
those  of  our  envoys  who  were  on  good  terms  with  him,  of  collecting,  and 
imparting  to  our  mission,  information  about  the  plans  of  the  British  Min- 
istry, has  come  to  occupy  an  equivocal  position  in  the  judgment  of  history. 
George  Bancroft,  the  American  historian,  has  set  him  down  as  "a  double 
spy,"  and  the  view  of  Bancroft  has  been  followed  by  others,  including 
Henri  Doniol,  in  his  work  on  the  participation  of  France  in  the  establish- 
ment of  the  United  States.  But  it  would  seem  difficult  for  anyone  to  take 
this  view  after  reading  the  acute  and  vigorous  discussion  of  the  subject 
by  Dr.  Francis  Wharton  in  the  Diplomatic  Correspondence  of  the  Revolu- 
tion. In  a  letter  to  David  Hartley  of  Feb.  22,  1779,  Franklin  pronounced 
Bancroft  a  "Gentleman  of  Character  and  Honour." 


Franklin's  French  Friends  543 

When  we  remember  that  all  these  men  and  women  have 
with  him  said  "good-night"  to  his  Landlord  of  Life  and 
Time,  and  gone  off  to  their  still  chambers,  we  experience 
a  feeling  something  like  that  of  Xerxes  when  he  gazed 
upon  his  vast  army  and  reflected  that  not  a  man  in  it 
might  return  from  Greece.  The  thought  that  there  might 
never  again  be  any  movement  in  those  cheerless  rooms,  nor 
any  glimmer  of  recurring  day  was  well  calculated  to  make 
one,  who  loved  his  friends  as  Franklin  did,  exclaim,  "I  too 
with  your  Poet  trust  in  God."  The  wide  sweep  of  his 
sympathies  and  charities,  the  open  prospect  ever  main- 
tained by  his  mind,  are  in  nothing  made  clearer  to  us 
than  in  the  extent  and  variety  of  his  friendships.  They 
were  sufficiently  elastic,  as  we  have  seen,  to  include  many 
diverse  communities,  and  such  extremes  as  Joseph  Watson 
and  James  Ralph,  George  Whitefield  and  Lord  le  De- 
spencer,  John  Jay  and  General  Charles  Lee,  Polly  and 
Madame  Brillon.  The  natural,  instinctive  side  of  his 
character  is  brought  to  our  attention  very  plainly  in  a  letter 
from  him  to  David  Hartley,  which  reveals  in  an  engag- 
ing manner  the  profound  effect  worked  upon  his  imagin- 
ation by  a  poor  peasant,  but  veritable  philosopher  who  had 
walked  all  the  way  to  Paris  from  one  of  the  French  prov- 
inces for  the  purpose  of  communicating  a  purely  benevo- 
lent project  to  the  world.  But,  at  the  same  time,  he 
never  found  any  difficulty  in  accommodating  himself 
to  aberrant  or  artificial  types  of  character,  or  to  alien 
usages,  customs  and  modes  of  thought.  He  belonged 
to  the  genus  homo  not  to  the  species  homo  Americanus 
or  Britannicus.  Like  the  politic  and  much-experienced 
Ulysses  of  Tennyson,  familiar  with 

"Cities  of  men 
And  manners,  climates,  councils,  governments, " 

he  could  say, 

"lama  part  of  all  that  I  have  met." 


544       Benjamin  Franklin  Self-Revealed 

Wherever  he  went  into  the  world,  he  realized  his  own 
aspiration  that  the  time  might  come  when  a  philosopher 
could  set  his  foot  on  any  part  of  the  earth,  and  say,  "This 
is  my  Country. "  Wherever  he  happened  to  be,  he  was 
too  exempt  from  local  bias,  thought  thoughts,  cherished 
feelings,  and  spoke  a  language  too  universal  not  to  make  a 
strong  appeal  to  good  will  and  friendship. 


Mt 


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